Dementium
by One Hit Wonders Anonymous
Summary: Nightmares are the windows into the soul, the core of ultimate fear. A strange shadow is worming its way into Danny's mind, but what are its intentions? Pre-PP. Discontinued for now, unfortunately, I'm kind of at a road block!
1. Chapter One

Hello all! Here I come with an all new project, hope you guys enjoy! Without further ado, I give you the introduction to 'Dementium'!

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><p><strong>-Dementium-<strong>

**Chapter One**

The air was thick and hot. Sweat dripped down Danny's neck, giving little relief to the fear crippling his mind.

"What do you want with me?" He asked boldly, trying to hide the shake in his voice. The bars of his small prison were covered in a fine coat of ecto-ranium; he had already tried fazing through them with the result of a jolting shock of resistance to his spectral core. However, the cold from the metal, much like the sweat forming upon his brow and neck, did nothing to ease the anxiety and tension Danny felt in the dark, humid room.

The disembodied voice, which Danny could only recognize as a black, looming shadow, chuckled to himself. "What a preposterous idea…" The shadow grew in stature. "I don't want anything of yours, why would you think yourself important enough for me to steal from?"

Danny flinched, biting his lip and clenching his fists. "I don't believe you," his speech faltered just slightly, falling back into the childlike fear he so desperately stifled, "why else would I be in here anyway?" He motioned toward the slightly glowing ceiling he crouched beneath.

"Because, ghost child," Danny noted that his captor knew his identity, "I simply want... to observe, you could say."

The large figure sat upon an invisible stool. "You see, Phantom, I have been watching you. I know of your foes, your friends, your past, your future…" Danny could see with his imagination the smirk spreading on the shadow's face, making him no less afraid. "I feel like I could know you as a dear friend. However, that's entirely the opposite of my intention.

"I have seen all of your fights and your struggles, in ghost fighting that is. I have found the patterns, and seen all the failures of my incompetent colleagues. You won't be disappointed, friend, because I don't seek your DNA, don't want your powers, and Pariah knows I don't want your pelt." The figure shuddered and Danny almost would have laughed had the situation not been unsettling.

"But enough of that. I think you get the idea, Phantom, that I'm not here to experiment or steal, as it is not my style. Rather, if you will," the figure contemplated its statement, "I want to turn you against yourself."

"Against myself?" Danny piped up, cocking his eyebrow and staring incredulously into the shadow. "What do you mean?"

"All in good time, friend, you will know soon enough. Now lay your head down to rest, like a good boy." Suddenly, Danny's vision began to swirl. The room spun on its axis and he soon lost his balance, falling on his face, though he was too dizzy to feel the crunch of his chin against the cement floor.

"No…" he protested feebly. The shadow chuckled as it had in the first place and Danny watched his shiny black shoes come into focus before his eyes. He struggled to lift his sight but his eyelids felt like lead, and they shut just before he could catch a glance of his captor.

Laughter rang through the echoing room as the last moments of Danny's consciousness fled.

"Goodnight… Danny Fenton."

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><p>Danny awoke with a start, sweat dripping down his brow and soaking his bed sheets. After a few hurried gasping breaths, he groaned, pressing his forehead into his palm and running shaking fingers through his hair. 'Just a dream,' he thought calmly, closing his eyes and slowing his breathing.<p>

"Danny!" Yelled Jazz from the bottom of the stairs, voice leaking through his paper thin door, "You have fifteen minutes, get yourself out of bed already!"

He groaned for the second time that morning, slowly dragging the tight curtain from his legs and rolling out of his soft refuge. "Coming!" he yelled half-heartedly before throwing on a t-shirt and jeans and stomping heavily to the bathroom.

Danny stared at himself as he brushed his teeth and combed his hair into place the best he could in a few moments' time, contemplating the dream he'd just woken from. 'It seemed so real,' he thought with a shudder, wiping his mouth and sprinting down the stairs quickly, 'but I can't do anything about it now, gotta get to school.'

As if on cue, Jack Fenton rounded the corner. "Danny-boy, good morning!" He boomed.

"Want a poptart, sleepy head?" Said the warm voice of Maddie Fenton, chiming in behind her husband with a warm smile directed to Danny. He shook his head no.

"No thanks, I'm fine. Jazz?" His sister lifted her eyes just barely from the article she was reading from the most recent medical journal, raising her eyebrows as a sign of acknowledgement. "Can we get going?"

"What has you so raring to go Dann-o, girl to meet this morning?" Jack said innocently, sinking his teeth into his morning hunk of chocolate fudge. Danny blushed, rounding the corner and tearing on his sneakers while slinging his backpack over his shoulder.

"Now Jack, he'll come home with a girl when he's good and ready!" Maddie clucked her tongue, pulling fresh muffins from the oven.

By this point Danny had already left through the front door, leaving the banter of his parents behind while Jazz followed close behind. This was a normal occurrence obviously in the Fenton household.

The drive was spent trying to insulate heat, as the winter was creeping into fall and Jazz's old car was often frosted over in the mornings. Danny rubbed his hands together and looked down at them, flashing briefly back to his dream.

_Cold dark metal bars, electrocuting his glowing hands at the slightest touch, the steam from the reaction wafting upwards toward the similar ceiling…_

Danny could feel his fingertips tingling. 'It's too real…' he thought, biting his lip in worry and rubbing his hands more vigorously together.

"You okay?" Jazz asked, furrowing her brow in worry and reaching a free hand to Danny's shoulder. "You seem a little funny."

"Yeah, I'm fine…" Danny responded, appearing spacey as they rounded the final corner to Casper High. "It was just a weird dream."

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><p>"Dude, you don't look so good." Tucker Foley added unhelpfully as the gang of three made their way to their regular table in the school's cafeteria.<p>

"Yeah," Sam Manson piped in, setting her backpack and tray down carefully before taking her seat opposite the boys, "You seem a little spacey today, Danny. What's on your mind?"

Danny sighed. Apparently, he wasn't very good at disguising his own discomfort. "It's fine guys, I just had a freaky dream last night."

Sam cocked an eyebrow. "Oh? What was it about?"

Danny frowned with annoyance slightly. "It was nothing, seriously. Just a typical ghost dream."

"You realize often times anything involving the word 'ghost' is bad in our situation." Tucker quipped, earning himself a strong glare from Danny.

"Tucker's right, Danny, just tell us."

Danny grimaced. "Okay look, I was in this metal cage thing that zapped me when I touched it and a guy was talking to me. That was all okay?"

"Jeez, Danny, we just want to help." Tucker feigned being hurt physically by recoiling away dramatically.

He sighed. "I know Tuck, I'm sorry. It's just been really grating on my mind today."

"Well, how about you just answer our questions and we'll let you alone?" Sam caught his attention, looking into his eyes while she picked her way through the vegetables on her lunch tray.

"Alright, shoot."

"Who was the guy who had you kidnapped?" Tucker asked.

"I dunno, I never saw his face. He was kinda like a shadow, all I saw was a silhouette."

"Creepy…"

"Yeah," Danny laughed, "you're telling me." He felt himself lighten up a bit after talking with his friends, a smile creeping its way back on his face. "But honestly guys, I don't think it was a big deal. Don't worry about it, okay? I can take care of myself."

Sam smiled nostalgically, looking down at her sandwich. "Yeah, we know. We just don't want you to bear this kind of stuff all on your own."

"Yeah, we're here for you man. No homo." Tucker smirked, patting his hand on Danny's upper back. Danny laughed, the color creeping back on his face that had deserted him this morning.

'Everything will be fine for now.'

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><p>"Welcome back, Daniel."<p>

Danny whipped his head around, eyes widening in fear as he recognized the black shadow of a man many feet in front of him. "You again? Don't you have somewhere better to be than in my dreams?"

The shadow suddenly swept up to Danny's cage, causing him to flinch and scuttle backwards quickly, moving his arms in defense. He thought he caught a flash of a facial feature: huge, bloodshot, beady eyes with colors he couldn't identify swirling in the irises. "What do you want?" Danny's voice faltered, his fists clenched tightly.

"I want your mind." Danny started.

"What?" He chuckled nervously. "I don't know if you've heard from any of my teachers but I'm not exactly an A student."

"I don't want your intellect, boy." The creature's mouth opened to reveal pearly white razor-sharp teeth. "I want your sanity."

"You're not even real…" Danny whispered, trying to hide his fear but failing miserably.

"Oh, I assure you, Danny, I'm real." Danny suddenly felt an ice cold chill creep up his chest and prod into his heart. It felt as if something was probing through his chest, and he grabbed at himself instinctively.

"What are you doing to me?" He cried out sharply and quickly, feeling the probe inside his core turn sharp and spike into his nerves. Electric pain shot throughout his body and he jolted, his eyes widening.

"Like I said, Daniel, I'm taking your mind…" The voice began to laugh loudly, reaching a knotted, rotting hand toward his prison and slowly curling it into a fist.

Stars jumped into Danny's vision as he shouted in pain, feeling a cold, clammy hand close around his core. The jolts of nerve pain traveled down each limb and fried his fingers and toes, and he began to lose consciousness.

"I want to take away your sanity, bit by crumbling bit." The voice laughed loudly and harshly as Danny's eyes shut from the fatigue and pain of the fingers around his core, and he passed out.

Danny awoke with a start, and the déjà vu was crippling.

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><p>Alright guys, leave me a review if you can! I can't promise when I'll be updating but I have half the story already written, so I just have to edit my way through. Thanks for reading!<p>

-One Hit Wonders Anonymous.


	2. Chapter Two

Hello lovely readers! Back so soon, you ask? Well I have quite a bit of this story already written, and I'm quite inspired to continue my work as of late! Also, my L key has been acting up lately- let me know if you catch any instances where it's been left out of a word.

Without further ado, the second chapter of my newest creation:

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><p><strong>.~*Dementium*~.<strong>

**Chapter Two**

"It happened again last night, guys." The so called loser trio huddled in at the picnic table they sometimes fancied at lunch period the following Thursday afternoon, faces etched with worry. Danny had been shaky and restless all day, and they'd had to wait until lunch to ask because of the ruthless threat of detention from Mr. Falluca in biology.

"What happened?" Sam asked hurriedly, rubbing one hand over the other and picking at her painted fingernails as she often did when she was nervous, Danny had noted long ago.

"The man was back, and I was still in that cage..." Danny faltered, debating his words. "And that was basically it."

"Really? Boring dream, man." Tucker remarked.

"Shut up Tucker, it's probably still scary!" Sam punched Tucker in the arm playfully, but from the expression on Tuck's face it hurt much more than it should have. Danny chuckled quietly to himself. "Don't listen to him, Danny." Sam gave Danny a soft smile at the sound of his laughter, but Danny's mind was already far away.

'I don't want them to worry,' he pondered, wondering if he was making the right decision, 'I think I can handle this on my own, it's just a bunch of nightmares.' He set his head straight and looked Sam and Tucker in the eyes, smiling back. "Yeah, but it's fine. No big deal, after all."

They ate the rest of their lunch in relative silence. Danny closed his eyes as he munched on his sandwich, holding in the sigh that was threatening to leak out. Despite having received full nights of sleep, the nightmares seemed to drain him of all the energy he would have gotten from a normal night's sleep. He'd almost fallen asleep last period. He briefly wondered when he would catch a break.

At that moment, a high pitched scream rang out near the entrance of the school and Danny snorted at the irony. His friends gave him a confused look quickly before snapping into business: Tucker pulling his always handy Fenton thermos from his backpack, and Sam arming herself with her favorite portable ecto-gun wristband.

"Meet you guys there in a few," Danny said fluidly as it was a common practice, ducking under the table and closing his eyes as he reached for the cold, dead feeling in his chest that lingered constantly. The familiar rings washed over him as he felt his senses slow, and Danny Phantom was reborn in seconds. Sometimes, Danny liked to think of it that way, as a rebirth. Phantom did get tucked away each time he turned back into his human form, after all.

Danny shot from under the table cloaked with invisibility. His hair whipped behind him in its typical unkempt way, and like each time he took flight, a lurking feeling of pleasure and freedom burst from his chest and made him feel positively giddy.

In little time at all he reached his destination, and was not at all surprised by the presence of one of the ghosts he encountered more regularly than he ever hoped, Penelope Spectra. "Spectra? What are you doing here, planning on feeding off of little kids crying about a scraped knee on the playground?"

Spectra grimaced and took Danny for surprise, grabbing him by the shoulders and pushing him through the school's brick outer wall and into a nondescript closet; luckily Danny had managed to become intangible in time to risk more damage to his often abused school.

"I'm not here to play _games_, freak." She snarled, her midnight black face sending chills down Danny's spine, though he hid it well.

"I don't suppose you're going to apologize either, darn." Danny joked playfully, but Spectra dug her clawed hands into his arms and he got the point with a quiet yelp. "Okay, okay, what do you want?"

"Is he inside you?" She said urgently.

"What? What are you talking abou— Aargh!" Danny cut himself off as a sudden shock of electricity traveled down his appendages rapidly, frying his nerves and sending him into fleeting agony. His head sunk in exhaustion, but the fight wasn't over yet. A presence was clawing into his mind and into his consciousness, and though he clenched his eyes shut in concentration, he was inferior to its strength.

Spectra gasped and recoiled when Danny's drooping head suddenly snapped up. His eyes were shocked open to reveal a devastatingly eerie mixture of all the familiar colors Spectra still couldn't name. "Penelope." He spoke, but it was not Danny Fenton's voice. The tone echoed with a deep baritone and bounced all around the room. Spectra felt incredibly cornered and undeniably, pitifully scared.

"You! Leave him alone you bastard, he's still just a kid!" Spectra spat, but Danny's overshadowed body lurched forward and took her arms roughly, forcing her to look into his endless eyes.

"And what would you care for a sniveling little kid, Penelope? I thought you hated children." An unnatural smirk crossed Danny's face.

"Don't you get it?" Spectra whispered venomously, eyes wide with anger. "If he loses it the whole ghost zone could be in danger! Don't you know how much power he has? Hell, he hasn't tapped into most of it yet!"

"Leave me be, Penny, I know what I'm doing. I'll be smarter with this than I was last time. I have all the pieces set in place…" Danny's finger hooked over her jaw and traced it lovingly with a gentleness she didn't know could come from the monster inside him. "It's such a shame you turned out as a failure…" His soft smile was tainted into a smirk.

Spectra lost it and howled, grabbing Danny by the neck, but he had already won. "I'll get you, you hear? I'll destroy you!" He laughed maniacally as he faded back into Danny's subconscious, and soon Spectra was left only with a dazed and confused teenager.

"And goddammit, don't call me Penny you monster!" She screamed, and shot off like a dart into the sky, leaving Danny behind to fall into the folds of the closet he'd been stowed into.

"What?" He asked himself, rubbing his head. "I don't even remember talking to her…" He shrugged and flew back out to the entrance to meet Sam and Tucker just in time.

"It's no use guys, she just kind of flew away on her own."

"Weird. Who was it?" Tucker inquired.

"Spectra," Danny said, spacing as he thought about the brief encounter he remembered, "and she was really freaked out by something. She was kind of frantic."

Sam shrugged. "Not much to do now. Did she hurt you?" Danny shook his head no quickly. "Alright, then let's get to class. Hopefully we'll make it the rest of the day without any weird ghost encounters."

Tucker laughed sardonically. "Sam, listen to yourself. We're lucky if we make it one period without any weird ghost encounters. Oh wait, we have one every second of the day…" He smirked and punched Danny's shoulder playfully as they entered Mr. Lancer's classroom.

"Hey, I resent that! I'm not weird!"

"Says the boy with ghost powers." Sam added quietly, laughing along with the boys.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh all you want. We'll see how you feel when the next ghost attack comes."

"Alright class, settle down," Mr. Lancer began, and the students began to quiet down with their chattering conversations, "We're getting back to Wuthering Heights today. Everyone turn to page forty-three…"

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><p>"Daniel, welcome back to my humble abode."<p>

Danny sighed, resting his chin on his palm and crossing his legs. "Seriously, are you going to do anything substantial in here anytime soon? I'm starting to get bored." He began to feign yawning when the shadow consumed his cage with a fiery inferno, catching him off guard and pulling a gasp from his throat.

"You want to get into the fun stuff, hmm?" The shadow roared menacingly and Danny could almost feel the heat of a beast's breath down his neck. "You think you can control my little show in your little cage with your little powers?" Danny scowled.

"I don't need to control it; I just need to make it through it until I wake up." Danny smirked, thinking he'd found the hole, but he was sorely mistaken. The fire turned white hot, forming tiny, slithering tendrils, dancing around the cage that felt suddenly twice as small.

"You don't even remember half of what happened today, do you Daniel? I wonder what happened to Spectra? I bet you're itching to know."

Danny backed away from the razor-sharp white flames, shaking slightly and hiding his eyes from the blinding lights. "What..?" He asked to himself quietly, eyes widening as the fire closed in on his tiny prison. "Get away from me, wait, what are you talking about?"

As it had always been in each of the dreams, the shadow laughed menacingly. "All I need is your sanity, boy, you can burn black for all I care!"

The flames attacked and Danny screamed; the pain was unbearable. He felt the flames shoot into his heart and burn holes through his entire body, lighting a fire in his veins.

"How's that for boring?" The shadow practically shrieked with excitement, tearing into Danny's body once more. Danny's screams rang out in his mind for what felt like an eternity. His mind finally began to melt away into unconsciousness, but not before the shadow man came up upon his cage slowly.

"You see, Danny, I'm not just stuck in your sub-conscious field…" Danny's eyes began to force themselves shut, but not before the shadow uttered its last glaring sentence.

"I can control _anything_."

Danny woke up that morning in the middle of a bloodcurdling scream, his arms out to each side of him and his fists clenched to bear the pain. It took his sister mere seconds to dash from her bedroom across the hall to his, smacking the door into the wall accidentally. "Danny! Are you alright, what's wrong?"

Danny panted quietly, his eyes wide despite being hidden behind his clammy palms. "Yeah... yeah, I'm alright." He forced himself to breathe deeply, his breath shaking on its way out. Jazz took her chance to delicately slip into his bedroom, mindful of the dirty clothes and mess on the floor, and sit at the end of his bed.

"What happened, was it a ghost dream? It wasn't Nocturn, was it?" She looked genuinely concerned. He shook his head slowly, noticing the slight headache drilling at the back of his brain.

"No, just a nightmare. I'll be fine."

"Alright, well you're up pretty early, little brother. Want to sleep an extra hour?" Danny glanced at the clock on his bedside table- she was right, he had plenty of time. He blinked and saw a flash of white hot tendrils of fire…

"No, I'll just get up and watch TV." Jazz smiled and ruffled up his hair a bit, much to his dismay, and quietly exited his room. Danny relaxed, letting out the shaky breath he'd been holding inside. He calmly yet swiftly made his way to the bathroom and shut the door quickly, sitting down on the closed toilet seat and brushing his hands nervously into his hair.

"I'm fine, I'm fine…" repeated Danny, hoping the mantra would slow his racing mind and calm his furiously beating heart. However, he froze before he began to comb through his hair again, and stared closely at his fingertips: tiny, barely noticeable red marks. They ran down the first knuckle of each finger and stopped short, like tiny jellyfish stings. His eyes widened and he looked down at his feet to find the same markings at his toes.

"Oh god." He whispered almost unconsciously, his heartbeat tripping over its beat as he connected the dots. "It is real, it is real." Sweat began to form over his lip and on his neck, but he quickly brushed it away, standing up and holding in place for a few moments before staring into the mirror. "I'm alright."

"Danny, are you going crazy?" Danny jumped and grew quickly embarrassed by how much his sister's voice had startled him. "I swear I just heard you talking to yourself."

"Yeah, I'm fine Jazz. I'm not one of your patients." He tried to crack at her, but found himself wincing as he realized he very well could be her patient for what he'd been going through.

The door cracked open slightly. "Can I come in, though?" She said quietly, and he nodded before he realized she couldn't see him and gave verbal approval. She closed the door behind her and gave Danny one of her more serious looks. "What's really going on? You can't hide from me forever. I was going to wait for you to confront me but I'm much too worried at this point."

Danny sighed, sitting back down on the covered toilet. "I've been having really bad nightmares, the past few days actually. I'm not sure what it is, but they mess with my head a little." He looked up at her, trying to give a reassuring smile when he knew how fake it must have appeared. "I'll be fine, I might just be coming down with some sort of freaky ghost cold. Those exist, right?"

Jazz rolled her eyes. "So weird. Well, let's get going downstairs and grab a snack, we've got plenty of time." She opened the door and slid out its opening.

"I hope the bathroom isn't going to become our regular hang-out." He called after her, earning an eye-roll from his loving older sister. When she finally clicked the door shut, Danny lingered just a moment longer, staring at the scorch marks on his fingers and toes pensively.

'I can still handle this on my own, right?'

Familiar laughter suddenly rang loudly through his head, causing him to cover his ears and bite down on his tongue hard. _'So you think.'_ The voice boomed into his eardrums and he felt compelled to fall to his knees and grate his teeth in pain. The intense buzzing however left as quickly as it came, leaving Danny panting and terrified for the second time that morning.

"What is wrong with me..?"

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><p>Danny dreaded every second that passed as he neared the end of his day, when he'd inevitably close his eyes and return to the hellish place if the silhouette and his demonic games. He barely spoke a word during school, worrying Sam and Tucker further.<p>

As he walked home with them, he barely gave them a glance. When he reached his house, after Tucker had already reached his and Sam had a few blocks to go, she caught his shoulder and stopped him before he took the stairs to his front door.

"Danny, what's up with you? Seriously, you've been really despondent lately and you won't talk to Tucker or me about it." She scowled slightly.

Danny sighed softly. "Sam, I… I don't know, okay? Some weird stuff is going on."

"Why won't you tell us about it?" She asked with a hint of desperation in her eyes. "You need to get it through your thick skull one of these days that we can make things _better_ for you if you just tell us!"

"I don't know about this time, Sam." Danny said quietly, looking down and averting his gaze. His heart clenched when Sam let out a disappointed sigh.

"If you get so much as a scratch on you that I don't know about or can't account for according to your ghost fights, you're in big trouble." Subconsciously, Danny hid his fingertips from her view, even though he knew she'd probably never pick up on it without extreme attention to detail.

"Alright, Sam." He sent her the most genuine smile he could. He saw a glimmer of something in Sam's expression _–sadness, worry? –_before she enveloped him in a big hug.

"I swear to god I will kill you if you say anything about this. Or if you die. Both are accurate predictions." Sam mumbled into his shoulder, and Danny finally snapped out of his shock long enough to hug her back briefly before she pulled away.

"I know I can be pretty dumb sometimes,—"

"Pretty dumb?" Sam exaggerated, and Danny laughed.

"Yeah, but I'm not going to go get myself killed. I promise."

"You better keep that promise or you owe me big time, jerk."

"I'll take that as an 'I love you' then." Danny quipped, and Sam blushed in frustration and muttered a bloodthirsty comment about men before stalking off toward her house down the street. "See you tomorrow morning!" He yelled after her, to which she responded with a prominent middle finger. He laughed and turned to open his front door, not at all phased; he'd seen the upward turn on her cheek of a pleasant smile.

All night he kept his eyes glued to the computer screen, the television, his homework, anything to keep himself constantly occupied, to hide from whom he'd simply begun to call Shadow within his mind, as he'd never heard a name. He fought his eyelids valiantly. Each time they closed themselves, the flashes restarted, the room began to form.

_Dark, musty halls, invisible surroundings, a glowing prison and a dark, menacing shadow, sneering teeth, glittering multi-colored eyes…_

He felt his eyes closing slowly, and he felt powerless to stop them. 'No, _no!_" He practically cried in his mind, but it was too late. Blacks and reds swirled into the room and there he was again, inside his cage. Shadow appeared.

"What do you want?" Danny sneered, glaring hard into where he supposed Shadow's eyes lay. "I've had enough of your games."

"Games? Funny you should say that, ghost child. I suppose this is somewhat of a game."

"Do you think it's fun to mess with a fifteen year old kid?" Danny yelled, though he felt a bit silly yelling into a dark room with seemingly no one there.

"On the contrary, it's boring. But I know the reward is quite worth it." The pearly white teeth appeared again just in time for Danny to watch as his cage clicked open instantly, a doorway cut straight through the bars that swung down and freed him from his enclosure. "Come along Daniel, we'll start the real games."

"What are you playing at?" Danny asked, an incredulous look upon his face as he inched toward the new exit.

"All in good time, Daniel!" it shouted with glee, waving its blackened arms through the air slowly.

The floor began to shift, and Danny stumbled as he escaped from his prison, his ghost powers weakened by the cage he had resided within. The floor collapsed into a bottomless pit that spread through the middle of the room and cracked over the entire floor, small bits of wooden floorboard cracking off and tumbling into nowhere land. Spikes grew up from the ground, but Danny was too delayed to move as one shot straight into his left foot.

"Agh!" Danny cried out, biting his lip and shooting up into the sky to pull his foot from the spike. "What is this?"

"Isn't it so easy to just weave a dream into exactly what you want?" The shadow sat back on its regular throne, watching as Danny put pressure on the bottom of his rapidly bleeding foot. "Well, you can't control it, of course, but it's great fun for me."

"Shut up," Danny grimaced, "I can overcome you, I know I can!" The shadow man laughed.

"Don't you get it? You can't escape me, it's too late!" The shadow flew up to Danny quickly, staring straight into his eyes, and he got his first full glimpse of Shadow's face.

It was dark, though Danny wasn't sure if it was covered in fur or not. Facial features were surprisingly difficult to pick out; however, it was obvious how its huge teeth did not fit into its mouth. Its eyes bore cat-like slits within the seas of color unidentifiable by man, and it simply appeared repulsive. Danny felt the natural instinct to flee as it stared straight into his panic-stricken eyes.

"I am Dementium, not the diminutive title of 'Shadow' that you've given me on your own. I will infect your mind until your body falls. I will take apart your psyche in your dreams and in turn injure you in the conscious world. You will 'die' in all common senses of the word, Danny Fenton, and I will dispose of your finicky moral code the way my competitors could only dream of. Do you understand?"

Danny spit in its face. "Never." He snarled shortly, and the monster roared and reared its head.

The last thing Danny felt before he regained consciousness was the unmistakable feeling of a hand lined with sharp claws gripping his right shoulder and breaking the skin.

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><p>As always, leave me a nice review! I love reviews. Hope to see you again soon! Oh, and that DannySam-ish moment.. don't mind that. Not even meant like that, don't get too excited for any pairing action going on in here. -hides from fangirls- Although we'll see where the roller coaster takes us.


	3. Chapter Three

Yay, third chapter is here! Won't talk for long. Everyone enjoy!

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><p><strong>Chapter Three<strong>

Danny let out a sharp gasp and reached for his foot and his shoulder, feeling warm liquid oozing through his sock and t-shirt sleeve. He swore and bounced from his bed, hobbling to the corner of his room where he kept all of the first aid supplies he needed often after nasty ghost fights. Another swear escaped his lips when he pulled off his once white sock, and found a gaping puncture wound right through its bottom, pulsing and burning inside.

It felt different from many of the other wounds he'd ever had. The burn was itching and crawling and felt like it was trying to grow through his body. He could not explain it, but it felt like a combination of heat, and the tingling of a limb falling asleep.

He wound gauze around it quickly, deciding to tend to his shoulder later, but he did not notice his older sister crack open the door to wake him up as she usually did. "Good morni—Danny? Are you okay, what's wrong?" She rushed over to him, a concerned glimmer in her eyes. "Was it a ghost fight?"

He tried to hide the injuries as he finished up wrapping his foot tightly, turning his injured shoulder away. "Yeah, no big deal Jazz, it'll be fine," though he didn't believe his own words.

"I think that's your new catch phrase." Jazz sighed softly, moving closer to him.

"Danny, I'm worried. Whatever it is that's been hurting you has just been getting worse, and you're still pushing me and Sam and Tucker away!" She reached for his shoulder. "We just want to help—"

Danny bit back a cry as Jazz's palm hit the sore and bleeding claw marks on his shoulder and pulled back. Jazz's face bore shock as she pulled her hand back to find deep red on her palm. She looked straight into his eyes and it was like a carbon copy of the look his mother gave him when he was being stubborn. "Please, let me help you."

Danny sighed, closing his eyes as he thought it through. 'It's too late to hide it now.' "Alright," Jazz's eyes lit up, "they're just claw marks though, don't go overboard. I just need some antibiotic cream stuff and band-aids."

She pulled him into the bathroom for the second time, and sat him down at the edge of the bathtub, reaching into her own always handy first aid kit. The kit was old and beat up from many months of constant use, for when Sam and Tucker were not available or when Danny simply couldn't make it to their houses with his injuries. She cleared away the blood still crawling from under his skin, and they spent their moments in comfortable silence. Danny smiled; it felt nice to know Jazz cared for him so much.

Sometimes he underestimated her, he realized. Jazz wanted to help as genuinely as his friends did. He closed his eyes as she finished up the last of the bandages on his shoulder. "I'll talk to Sam and Tucker today. I'd rather not get you so involved to keep you safe," Jazz's smile faltered, "but I promise if we come up with something after we talk, I'll fill you in."

Her smile could light the room alone. "Take better care of yourself, little brother. There are lots of people out there who care about your wellbeing." Jazz said warmly. He sighed lightly, a smile still present.

"I know, Jazz. I'll do my best." Jazz suddenly pressed a light kiss to his forehead, and had anyone else been present Danny would have feigned being annoyed or embarrassed, but right then, it was wonderful. He wouldn't trade her for the world.

"Let's get to school, huh? It's finally Friday after all!" Jazz pulled him out of the room, mindful of his injured arm, and took him downstairs.

"Hey honey, happy Friday!" Maddie said cheerfully, pulling out toast that had just popped from the toaster.

"Yes, happy Friday! Finally the weekend, when we can work on our new ghost equipment!" Jack said excitedly, bending over a small device with its guts spilled out all over the kitchen table.

"Ooh, yes, the new thing you're working on now, dear?" Maddie said excitedly, eyes glittering.

"You got it, baby!" Danny rolled his eyes at his over-enthusiasm. "This fancy new thing's gonna revolutionize the way we study ghosts!"

"Alright time for school, nice talking to you guys!" Jazz said with a large fake smile, pushing Danny out in front of her and out the door; she had seen his face grow white with worry. She closed the door with an exasperated look on her face, placing her hand on Danny's good shoulder. "You're going to be okay, right? Just take it easy today and you'll have the weekend to recover." Danny gave her a reassuring smile.

"Yep. I've dealt with worse Jazz, you know that." She sighed and shook her head.

"Oh I know, I just can't help but worry about you, baby brother. And don't worry about that new invention," she began, heading to the driver's seat of the car and unlocking the doors, "It'll probably flop like all their other silly inventions." Danny nodded and ducked into the passenger's seat. They drove to school together with smiles on their faces, but as soon as they parted ways at the school's entrance, Danny grimaced, and stopped trying to hide the harsh limp in his stride from his injured foot. He could feel the blood as it slowly seeped into his bandages.

* * *

><p>Lunch could not come fast enough as Danny tapped away the minutes with his fingers, watching the clock. He raced from the classroom and to the cafeteria; it'd been raining all day and they weren't allowing students outside for lunch. Sam and Tucker were waiting for him at the doorway.<p>

"What did you want to talk about?" Sam asked, shoving the big door open and leading the group to their usual booth.

"Well, I wanted to come clean with you guys, I guess." Danny shrugged and sat down opposite Sam and Tucker. "It's not really just some nightmares…"

"Well duh," Sam said, rolling her eyes, "didn't take a genius to figure that out. How about we ask the questions, like, oh, I dunno, how did you get those gashes in your shoulder?" Danny winced.

"I don't think it'll work like that, I'll just have to start at the beginning anyway!" He closed his eyes, kneading the knuckles on his right hand with his left fingers. "Well these nightmares, they're about this demon kind of thing. I can't explain it, really. And he takes me to this lair or whatever and I'm stuck there, and he—" Danny paused, his eyes growing wide and hand grabbing his previously injured shoulder.

"Danny?" Sam called out, a worried and shaking tone in her voice, but Danny couldn't hear her through the blood pumping through his ears. His face grew stony and his eyes distant.

The claw marks in his shoulder were on fire. They shot with a poisonous serum through his veins, down his arm and into his chest. He felt like his heart was being ravaged with white hot electricity, but he could not scream. Something inside of him held his jaw shut, but he felt the color drain from his face as he doubled over.

Sam and Tucker jumped from their seats and Sam set her palm upon Danny's good shoulder, but the way he reacted was unexpected: he snapped his jaw like a rabid dog_._ Sam gasped and backed away as Danny shot his head up and smirked wildly. What was most haunting, however, were the swirling, menacing, beckoning eyes. Sam's eyes widened in horror as she noted the positively insane look on Danny's face. "Danny…?" She whispered, not quite asking for her friend and rather asking for the name of the strange creature inside his body.

"I've heard plenty of things about you two, in the recesses of Daniel's slowly rotting mind."

"Who are you?" Sam asked venomously, keeping her distance. "What are you doing to him?"

He laughed in a voice that was not Danny's. It was dark and evil as opposed to Danny's carefree, gentle chuckle. "Since you were so rude to not ask my name, I am Dementium."

"We don't care about your name, you sick bastard!" Sam yelled, but Tucker restrained her when she went to jump at his throat.

"No Sam, not worth it. Besides, everyone will wonder." Tucker straightened his posture, trying to hide his fear. "How did you hurt Danny on the outside if you're inside his mind?" Tucker stated strongly, scowling. The only hint that he was secretly terrified was the way he worried his lower lip with his teeth.

"The dreams, the nightmares! Isn't it obvious, boy? I'm scaring the wits out of your little friend!" The impossible eyes swiveled and swirled in their sockets, making both Sam and Tucker feel sick to their stomachs. "I'm pulling his deepest fears, his anxiety, and his depression from the darkest corners of his mind, and shoving them to the forefront of his worries! You're going to lose him, and soon enough, his mind will be all mine to control!"

"Never!" Sam yelled harshly. She flinched slightly as Dementium's pointed teeth poked from a devilish smile that definitely was not Danny's.

"Funny you should say that. That's exactly what Daniel said to me when I told him the same thing."

"Of course he did, because you're some kind of freak!" Dementium snarled.

"Watch it girl. With all of the untouched power this child holds, I could snap your neck in an instant." He moved fast as lightning to a position immediately in front of her and grabbed her arm, pulling a yelp from Sam. "Don't think I'll hesitate. Maybe you could learn a thing or two from your friend here." He said, looking straight into her eyes. She almost lost herself among the swirls of incredible colors and shapes in his irises. However, as quickly as they had sunk into the depths of Danny's eyes, they began to shrink and revert to a calming, familiar blue.

Danny snapped back into reality and blinked rapidly, looking around himself to find his bearings. "Sam? What just happened?" Sam had never felt so happy to hear his voice, back to normal and without the demonic howl behind it.

"That horrible creature just came into your consciousness, but I'm so glad you're back." She ran her fingers through her hair nervously, trying to hide her arm.

"Yeah, that's really freaky… Do you remember that happening any other time?" Tucker asked, losing his façade and sinking into a posture of distress.

Danny's eyes sunk far away, growing dull in deep thought. "I don't know, I don't think so…" However, in his time of staring into the distance, he noticed a splash of color along Sam's arm. "Sam?" He took her arm gently; she did not protest as he had already found her out. "Where…?"

He held in a gasp as he realized the colors growing on her arm were the perfect imprint of an outstretched hand. He slowly, as if he didn't want to believe it, traced his own hand over them and sure enough, they matched his fingertips exactly. "Oh god Sam, I'm so sorry, I didn't even know what was going on. It's just a big void of information in my head."

His mind was racing. Danny felt a creeping sense of self-loathing and hate curl around his chest. He cursed Dementium's name and felt his hands begin to shake as he pulled them back, away from Sam; in order to protect the ones he loved.

She shook her head, smiling reassuringly. "Don't worry about it. I know you can't control it. But we do need to take this seriously. Whatever's happening to you is really bad by the looks of it." Danny was barely listening; he was still lost in a world guilt and shame.

"That Dementium guy is really creepy. And he's like stuck in your mind all day?"

"No," Danny remarked as he snapped into reality, sitting down and hiding the shake in his hands, "I don't notice him until my dreams. I'm starting to feel really worn out, though. I don't know what to do." He couldn't hide the slight break in his voice.

"It's okay, we'll help you." Tucker said, smiling and patting his shoulder. "Want to come to my house for assorted video game adventures after school?"

"Do I ever, I could use a break." Danny said on an exhale, and smiled back. However, the fear clutching his heart did not, could not dissipate.

* * *

><p>Danny laid his head down to go to sleep that night, and though he had tried to relax with his friend after school, it had done nothing for the worries deteriorating his confidence. He closed his eyes, worrying his lip with his teeth and tossing and turning restlessly.<p>

"You're disgusting." Sneered the clear though unbearably loud voice of Dementium, so suddenly that it caused Danny to jump upright in fright.

"Stop it with the games, man, I'm sick of it." Danny said with a tone of sarcastic boredom.

"It's true." The voice crooned, and Danny felt a chill run down his spine. "You're the reason why your friends and family are falling apart."

"They aren't falling apart!" Danny barked. Dementium chuckled deeply.

"Can't you see it? You're making them insane. They constantly throw away their lives for you." Dementium sounded as if he was relaxing in a lounge chair, speaking as though it were a natural ordeal. "One day they're just going to… vanish."

"I'll protect them with my life before that happens."

"Ah, but Daniel, there's such a huge plot hole in that theory." Dementium clucked his tongue in a disapproving way. "You obviously cannot be everywhere at once. They'll be picked off, one by one, as you continue to fail to save them."

"That won't happen," said Danny defiantly.

"Oh but you know it's true, deep in your heart. I can sense it. You know that you can't help them, that you're not quite _good _enough."

"Stop it!" Danny yelled, gripping his head tightly and thrashing to his side. "I know I can, I won't let that happen to them!"

"Maybe you think you're strong enough, but life will creep up and it will kill each and every living thing that you love, because you're not a superhero, or even a simple hero. You're a nobody with creepy little powers. You knew that from the first day you woke up with half of your soul dead."

"Shut up!" Danny shrieked, but before Dementium could respond, his door was pushed open by a frantic-looking Jazz.

"Danny?" She flipped his light on, causing Danny to hiss in pain and she whispered a soft sorry. "Are you alright? Bad dream?"

"Not exactly…" Danny sighed. "Look, you have to promise you won't call me crazy when I tell you this, okay?"

"Shoot." Jazz smiled.

"There's a demon thing inside my head." Danny deadpanned, staring into her face to look for any unconscious reactions. When he found none, he relaxed just slightly.

"Was that what was just going on?" She asked, her tone smooth and calm. Though it was cliché, he found that her tone of voice actually made him feel calmer.

"Yeah. It was kind of like a fight. He can talk in my head but no one else hears it." Danny leaned forward to give Jazz a deeper look. "Please, don't tell mom and dad though. They shouldn't have to worry about it too."

"Danny, you must realize that they've noticed you changing."

Danny's eyes widened. "How?"

Jazz smacked her forehead. "It's not that hard to notice. You wear everything on your sleeve, doofus." Danny rubbed the back of his head nervously.

"Yeah, I guess… but I'm feeling alright now, Jazz, you can go."

"Oh, I see how it is, trying to get rid of me!" Jazz strutted out of the room with a jokingly stuck up expression on her face, making Danny laugh.

"But seriously, Jazz?" Danny spoke up, sinking back into his bed and pulling the covers up over his shoulders. She nodded in response. "Thanks for checking on me."

She gave him a warm smile. "Anything."

The door clicked shut, and for the first night in what felt like an eternity, Danny dreamed of total darkness, or in other words, nothing at all.

* * *

><p>"Thank god, I swear you were starting to look like the living dead. No pun intended, of course."<p>

"Tucker, the pun is always intended in your case." Danny rolled his eyes and landed on the soft carpet of Tucker's small but comfortable bedroom. "But yeah, I'm with you. I feel better rested than I have in forever." He made his way over to his friend who was already sitting in front of his large monitor. "What are you up to?"

"Actually," Tucker began, smiling brightly, "I'm doing something totally worth spending time on for once! I decided to try checking this Dementium guy out, see if there was any folklore or stories on the blogosphere."

"And?" Danny raised his eyebrow, intrigued.

"Well, come check this out." Danny scooted a chair up next to Tucker's and looked into the screen, which was flooded with white that blinded his eyes briefly when he first looked into its depths. "Apparently," he began, scrolling through the webpage to a particular place, "Dementium is some seriously old guy. He's been around for ages if these are really him.

"I still wonder what he has to do with Spectra." Tucker finished, trailing off with curiosity. Danny agreed quietly.

He looked at the illustrations beside a few of the stories. They were similar, though not nearly as gruesome as he truly appeared inside of his mind. "Yeah, I think that's him."

Tucker shuddered. "Ugh, he looks so gross." Danny laughed.

"He's worse in person, I promise." Tucker winced, remembering the incident at lunch earlier.

"I wanted to talk to you about that, man…" Tucker trailed off, not sure where to begin.

"What are you talking about?"

"Well, what happened the other day… What is that like?" Danny looked confused. "I mean, to have someone in your mind."

"Oh." Danny grew pensive, his eyes dulling as he searched his mind for the right way to describe it. "It's hard to explain. It's terrifying, sure, but something about it, it feels… kind of powerful. I feel like Dementium knows more about my powers than I do."

"How do you mean?"

"Well," Danny rested his chin in his palm, leaning on the computer desk, "It's like, part of my mind wants me to let him take over. And I know that sounds crazy," He quickly tried to wipe the alarmed expression from Tucker's face, "but it's not that I want to be controlled, but more that he's making my subconscious decide for itself. I think."

"I don't know." Tucker shook his head. "It seems sucky. How have you made it?" Danny smiled brightly.

"I have you guys."

"Aww, so touching," Tucker feigned wiping a tear from his eye. "Why don't we play a meaningful song and bro-hug now?"

"Oh shut up." Danny punched his shoulder, both of them laughing. "You don't even know how much I need you guys to cheer me up sometimes."

"Oh I know. Being a best friend makes me capable of sensing when you feel like crap. You're pretty obvious when you don't feel good." Danny shrugged, and plopped himself on Tucker's floor in front of his television for the proper gaming experience.

"Not the first one to tell me that in the last twenty-four hours." Danny suddenly grew serious. "Just promise one thing, Tuck."

"What is it?" Tucker turned his chair toward Danny.

"If Dementium takes over my entire mind," Danny paused as a voice rang in his mind, repeating in hurried, whispering, hushed tones of 'I will, I will!', "You and Sam have to do whatever it takes to kill him."

Tucker's eyes widened. "Dude, we're not going to kill you. There are other ways to take care of it." Danny's expression grew serious and steely.

"I don't think so, Tuck. Not if he completely takes me over."

"But this is all figurative, right?" Tucker said, chuckling nervously.

Danny didn't answer and instead flipped the on switch of the gaming system, but inside, was praying to any god who would listen.

'Please don't make my friends have to actually do this.'

* * *

><p>Review as always, guys! Hope you enjoy how things are coming along.<p> 


	4. Chapter Four

Oh this chapter is so exciting, things are heating up! Enjoy!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Four<strong>

Danny twirled a tiny tree branch between his fingers, thinking deeply about the sudden absence of Dementium that puzzled him greatly. He ran his thumb over a small knot between two branches that formed a misshapen 'Y'. He wondered, he pondered.

The ghost boy had decided on a whim that Sunday evening, after completing his homework for once for the following Monday, to go out, take a stroll. As was typical, he moved on a whim; Danny dropped everything he was doing quite suddenly just an hour after dinner when the sun began to set on Amity, and drifted to the nearest park. He found that he did his best thinking there.

After reaching his destination, Danny did an awful lot of milling about while trying to stimulate his mind. He thought of Spectra, of how wild and terrified her eyes had seemed as they stared into his. She must have known about Dementium, he concluded, as he rubbed the back of his head in an attempt to soothe the growing headache. 'But it still doesn't make any sense!'

He'd then found himself here, sitting on a park bench with the small branch of a tree in his hands. It probably wasn't even a tree, he thought, noting that it probably belonged to some long dead plant from a garden. Its origin, however, mattered little.

His thumb and forefinger scaled the longest length of the branch and worried into its surface.

"Okay," Danny said, more to clear his mental palette than anything, "Dementium. He's the number one problem." He snapped the very tip of the branch off of the body and threw it out into the tall grass of the park.

"Next must be Spectra. She must know something so I should try to talk to her somehow." He snorted as he broke a section of the Y from the branch; as if she would come near him willingly.

"And finally… me." Danny stared defiantly into the last length of the branch as though it were staring him back in the face. "I'm the last piece of this puzzle. But God knows what I'm supposed to do, because I don't know anything. I'm totally lost!" He sighed in frustration and looked up into the ever-morphing clouds. He felt a hint of desperation cloud his expression and his eyes grew watery with tears of anger and confusion.

"I've never faced anything like this before." He mumbled quietly. Suddenly, his spirit felt like a scared five year old. He felt his soul cower in fear within his chest and he slumped over his knees, his position defeated. "I don't know anyone who can help me. Maybe Clockwork, but he wouldn't really be helpful anyway."

Danny clenched his fists in anger. "Why can't he just leave me alone?" He asked rhetorically, voice growing louder.

"His name is Dementium, isn't it?"

Danny whipped his head around, getting on his feet and taking a defensive stance in an instant. "Who's there?" He asked, narrowing his eyes and scouring the bushes for the enemy.

"Someone… who knows what you're going through." From the darkness emerged Penelope Spectra, in her most humanoid form with her infamous tinted glasses, however, it was different. She did not have the perfectly sculpted hairstyle, replaced with a rather messy bun, and her clothing was much more casual. Her voice was meek and soft, uncharacteristic.

"What are you talking about?" Danny asked, suspicion in his eyes as he rose from his ready-for-combat position slowly.

"He was in my head once, a long time ago." Spectra lowered her head, clasping her hands together and rubbing them with worry. "He is a unique thing."

"What is he?"

"A demon." She deadpanned, her eyes locking onto his and seeming alive. "He is not human. He has no soul, and so he cannot become a ghost. I don't know what he is, but from experience, he is closer to the devil than anything else."

"Is there any way for me to escape? What happened to you..?" Danny asked, approaching her slowly. He felt a need to grow closer to her.

She began to speak softer, in a rushed near-whisper. "It began when I was very small…"

* * *

><p><em> It was time for recess at the primary school and all the children were spilling out of the back doors to play in the open fields, but Penny never liked to go outside much. She was happier indoors with a toy or a game to play with, something to stimulate the mind. All of Penny's teachers described her as a very bright child. <em>

_ Penny wandered along the outskirts of the school, careful not to leave the specifically set boundaries the chaperones had decided upon. She traced the hard, crackling cement of the building with her fingertips as she walked slowly beside it, enjoying the slight buzzing feeling it gave her. _

_ She had scaled these walls many a time, which was why she was so surprised to find something out of the ordinary that sunny day in spring. In one of the school's many angled corners, Penny found a small, black creature, with little eyes that shined like a bubble in the sunlight; that strange, unidentifiable color of rainbow light._

"_Who are you?" Penny asked, lowering to her knees to get a closer look at the creature. _

"_My name," the creature reminiscent of a slug rasped, "is Dementium." It seemed to be looking at her. "Might you get me some water, child?" Penny smiled and rushed off to the drinking fountain nearby and, careful not to spill, filled her cupped hand with as much water as it could carry._

"_Is this enough?" She asked, shoving her poorly coordinated hand toward the little slug creature. She noticed that it seemed to shine as if it was a smooth, polished stone. _

"_Yes, thank you." The creature gratefully said, and she could sense a smile. "Now, one more thing, child."_

"_Yes?" Penelope asked eagerly. _

"_You see that small seal on the wall, just over there?" A small tendril of deep black stretched toward a close corner of the school building. She nodded. "Please, destroy it. I am too weak." _

_Penny rushed over to the seal, leaving the tiny creature behind, and quickly pulled it from the wall. It felt warm, as though it were a piece of paper freshly printed in a machine. She lifted it to the sky and tore it, finding it a bit more difficult to tear than a typical piece of paper. A tiny scream leaked through the pieces, and she dropped them into a puddle and watched the ink run. _

"_Is that good?" She asked, running back to her new friend._

"_Oh, it's perfect, my friend." She noticed how much bigger he had suddenly grown, and it looked as though his hair and tail were on fire and oozing with energy. "I am forever indebted to you."_

"_What does that mean?" Penny asked, her head slightly tilted._

"_That means that I will do anything that you will ask." The black creature slid over the ground and slipped its way onto Penny's hand, but she did not falter. "I will stay with you and protect you, Penny, from now on." _

"_You know my name!" She gasped in surprise, and Dementium chuckled. _

"_I have known you for a long time." He slinked up her arm and over her back and absorbed himself into Penny's heart. She felt strange for a few moments, but it was not unbearable. Suddenly, she could feel him speaking inside of her. "I will always be here and you can call me when you need me, Penny." _

_Penny smiled. "Thanks a lot!" Just then, the chaperones called in the recess period, and Penny made her way back to her classroom to finish the day of learning. Meanwhile, Dementium smirked within his new home, a six year old's growing heart._

* * *

><p>"<em>Hey Dem, what do you think of those girls over there?" Penelope asked the creature within her heart, smirking as she passed the girls in question.<em>

"_I think they pale in comparison to you, Penny." Her heart felt warm with love. _

"_Oh you shouldn't, how would I deal with falling in love with myself?" She chirped, a smile permanently etched into her face as she walked home from the junior high school. _

"_You'd be falling in love with me, Penny." She giggled. "Now, how about I get to paying you back for the favor you gave me all those years ago?"_

_Penelope shrugged. "I figured you already had, you've helped me through a lot, after all."_

"_Perhaps, love, but I feel that I should do more. How about that Marcel girl?" Penelope shuddered. Marcel was the girl that everybody wanted to be, but especially the girl _she_ wanted to be. Marcel would come to school each day with new things to say about Penny, all of them bad. She just wished she would go away._

"_I can make her go away," Dementium said, reading her mind and her heart, "all it would take is a few moments of your time." _

_Penny thought for a moment, before nodding her head. "Yes. What will you do anyway, tell her off for me?" _

'_Oh, much better.' Dementium thought, and he swiftly shot up into Penelope's brain. Penny gasped, her mouth gaping open and her eyes shining wide, the feeling unpleasant. Suddenly, her eyes rolled back to be replaced with devilish multicolored cat eyes, and a smirk grew on her face. "Time for the fun I've been waiting for." _

_He strode up to Marcel quickly, feigning an innocent smile and putting on Penelope's voice entirely. "Hey, Marcel, could you come with me over to the back of the school? I need to talk to you for a second."_

_Marcel's posse all began to laugh quietly, staring at Penelope, though Dementium obviously cared little for their sneers. "Whatever, freak, let's just get this over with." They strode over to the relatively hidden area of the schoolyard, and Dementium wasted no time._

_He grabbed her neck, cutting off her air supply, and gouged deeply into Marcel's throat, destroying her vocal cords. She tried to scream, but without the proper use of her throat, it came out choking and nearly silent. Dementium laid Marcel gently down on the ground, watching the blood blossom behind her head. "There, there, it will be over soon." He said, bringing his demonic voice back into Penelope's throat and relishing in the fear radiating from the terrified girl's widened eyes._

_In two motions, her throat was torn out, and he held her down as she choked in her own blood. _

_Dementium's unnatural and ghastly smirk spread over Penny's bloodstained face. "Nighty night." He whispered into her ear as her eyes began to gray with death. _

_He stood swiftly and used his power to cloak Penelope's body in invisibility, and remove all traces of her involvement in Marcel's untimely death. He took his sweet time walking back to Penelope's close home, and cleaned all the evidence from her body. It was only after he triple checked each detail that he slunk back into the deep caverns of her heart and allowed her to regain control of her body._

"_Dem?" She asked, a bit dazed. "When did we get home?"_

"_You don't remember?" Dementium purred. "We just got home now."_

"_Ah, I see…" She said, allowing a smile to return to her face. How about we play a game on the computer or something?_

_Penelope was shocked to hear of the death of Marcel Adams the following Wednesday morning._

* * *

><p>"<em>I don't want you here, anymore." <em>

_Dementium grimaced. He couldn't keep her chained much longer; he had noticed the distance she had grown from him, physically pulling up walls in her mind and blocking him from her life. "What do you mean, dear?" He curled himself around her beating heart; something he knew made her happy to feel. "Don't you love me?"_

_Penny sighed. "I don't know, Dem. I don't think I can have you here anymore." _

_Dementium growled. "Why?"_

_Penny faltered, but stayed strong. "I don't want you holding me back. You keep me cooped up in my room all day and I have to start living before I leave the house!"_

_Dementium squeezed her heart, earning a gasp from Penny as she clutched her chest. "You can't survive without me, sweetheart." _

"_But I think I can!" Penny yelled, her eyes watering in desperation. "I can live without you. I don't need your help anymore! You've surely paid me back for what I did all those years ago, I only tore a little piece of paper!" Dementium growled dark and deep into her mind, echoing through her ears._

"_You don't know half of it. Remember Marcel? That was me. I did that for you, I thought it would be best for you. I'm the only one in this world that gives a shit about you Penelope, you're worthless and good for absolutely _nothing_. Don't you realize it? You need me to survive." His words were positively poisonous._

_The thick tears forming in her eyes suddenly spilled over her cheeks, her breath coming in tiny gasps. "What..? That was you? How did you do that?"_

_Dementium flooded her mind with the images. Penelope watched as her own hands, which she had never wanted to hurt a soul with, destroyed and murdered the girl from her class. The tears only came faster. "So much blood…" She mumbled quietly as though in a trance, eyes wide and dull as though seeing far away. _

"_Beautiful, isn't it?"_

_She snapped from her stupor quickly. "Why would you do that? She was just a kid! She didn't do anything wrong!" _

"_She was inconsiderate and selfish!" Dementium roared deep in her ears. "She deserved what she got."_

"_No one deserves that kind of death." She moaned, holding her face in her hands and sinking to her knees. "I should never have let you inside of me!"_

"_You need me." Dementium snarled. "And I'll show you just how much you need me. I'll show you how powerful I am!" Penelope screamed as she felt inky control leak through her limbs, burning and tearing through her tissues roughly. The pain was unbearable; Dementium wanted it to hurt, she realized in shock. _

_Before she knew it, darkness clouded everything, and she felt as though she were simply asleep._

* * *

><p><em>Dementium observed his painting with a maniacal cackle bubbling from Penelope's tainted lips. The blood was his paint and the room his canvas, and he shivered with glee each time he laid eyes on the two bodies sprawled out on the living room floor, having fallen on top of one another haphazardly. He shrunk back into the heart of his charge and waited for the storm to come. <em>

"_Mm… What?" Penelope asked, eyes bleary and half opened. "What happened? Mom?" She finally gained focus of the room, and let out a bloodcurdling, shrieking scream. _

"_Dementium!" She choked, staggering back and hitting the wall behind her. "Dem, help me! What happened, what is this?" She covered her eyes, the tears leaking through her eyelids thick and hot. "Oh god," she repeated, digging her nails into her scalp, "oh god oh god, what happened?"_

"_This was what needed to happen, my dear." Dementium cooed, stroking her heart gently. "You owe me now, correct?" Penny's eyes opened wide._

"_No… you didn't! You monster!" She cried, thought Dementium only laughed. He sent the images of his own memory into Penelope's brain: the picture of Marcel with her eyes growing dull in a puddle of her own blood, the image of her mother's mouth caught mid-scream as she snapped her neck, the look of terror on her father's face when she tore a knife into his chest. Penelope wailed, falling down the wall and to her knees while sobbing loudly. _

"_Why Dementium, why would you do this? I don't understand!" She took a fleeting look at her parents' mangled bodies. "I thought you loved me!"_

"_Loved you?" Dementium roared with laughter. "My god, you're the stupidest girl I've ever met! Who could love you? You're so self-centered, selfish, and hopelessly alone! You have no one. And now eleven years chained inside this body will come to fruition!" _

_Penny screamed in agony; fire ripped through her limbs as Dementium traveled through every nerve in her body. He moved like lead in her bloodstream, causing her pain and taking over her body slowly. "I'm going to kill you, Penny. I've already destroyed you mentally. Now it's time you spent eternity in purgatory." _

_Dementium let the black ink of his body slide over Penelope's body slowly and laughed with malice as she cried tears of absolute fear and pain. The shining black she remembered from eleven years ago suddenly enveloped her own skin, and she felt her heart slow to a deafening stop. _

"_It's too bad our escapade failed. You would have been extraordinary." _

_A burst of hypothermic air shot through her chest, and her core was created. She realized there was nothing she could do, and resigned to her fate. Her hair rose in spikes over her head, covered in the thin black sleet that Dementium had infected her with. Her soul was rotten and destroyed; she realized she was becoming a ghost now by pure instinct. She would remain forever tainted. The tears ran slowly down her semi-corporeal cheeks. _

"_It was fun, Penny," Dementium sneered, "but I really must be going. Enjoy an eternity in doubt and fear!" And with that, he was gone, leaving Penelope Spectra to weep over the corpses of her dead and gone parents, the last of her family. _

_She hated herself. She hated the ghostly tail that followed her everywhere; the claws that grew from where clean and manicured nails once sat; the horrible shapelessness of her wretched body. She craved the compliments that Dementium would feed her daily. However, she realized with a punch to the gut that it was all a lie. _

_Spectra curled up between her deceased parents as a child would to a mother after a bad dream, and cried herself into a comatose state._

* * *

><p>Danny stepped back slightly, a horrified look stretching over his face. "Oh god, Spectra, I… I'm sorry, I had no idea, I always just poked fun at you without thinking."<p>

Spectra shook her head. "It is nothing, it's a part of my past now. But you, little freak, better never call me Penny. That's how I know where Dementium is, and I also hate that nickname. It's a place I never want to go back to." She began to walk slowly down the park's pathway and Danny followed silently, listening intently to what she had to say.

"I've been tracking Dementium for a long time. He's been through so many humans I don't know their individual names anymore. But you, you're different. You can fight." She turned to look him straight in the eye, glasses flashing. "You need my help as I need yours. I suggest we form an alliance."

Danny straightened up his posture and nodded curtly. "But like I asked before… can I escape?"

Penelope looked away just for a moment; a fleeting feeling of doubt.

"No one has ever survived. Not once in sixty years."

* * *

><p>Thanks for reading guys, please leave a review! Hope you liked it.<p> 


	5. Chapter Five

Hey guys, sorry this took so long! Also it's a bit short- I'm going on a vacation so I wanted to get something out for you guys without leaving any kind of cliffhanger, because I'm nice. :3 Anyways, enjoy!

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><p><strong>Chapter Five<strong>

Danny's world froze. He blinked a few times, trying to allow all the information he'd just been given into his conscious thought. "Sixty years, huh…" He said quietly, voice far away. "Hey," His face grew cheeky and a smirk split his face, "You're pretty old, Spectra."

Spectra hissed. "This is no time to joke, Fenton!" Danny started slightly- she never usually called him by his real name.

"Alright, alright," Danny said, waving his arms in a truce, "but I have to ask you a few questions first. You were a teenager when you died, so why do you look like an older woman now, as a ghost?"

Spectra's face hardened. "This is the body that I'd always wished I would have. This isn't what I looked like, not quite. I always envied the older women, the businesswomen with power and poise… Well, that's how I ended up after my death." Danny nodded.

This entire situation had proven so confusing for the boy. He crossed his legs and hovered just a few inches from the ground below, resting his chin on his palm and thinking hard. Spectra, all of a sudden, wasn't just another enemy; she was once a young girl named Penelope with typical schoolyard problems. He furrowed his brow- how many of the other ghosts he fought on a daily basis had the same story? Or rather, how many were just like him?

"We have a crazy road ahead of us, don't we?" He said, though it was not a simple statement. It was a silent test, to see if she held any allegiance to him.

"I'm not going to become your best friend," She stated, eyebrow raised, "but I want Dementium dead and gone for good, and I think you're my best hope yet. You have strength, boy, you've fended off his spells for much longer than any of the other hosts."

"What do you mean?" Danny cocked his head to the side, adjusting his posture to look to Spectra more strongly.

"You're not how I was. You haven't… let him turn you. It's hard to explain. You become dependent, I guess, and he gives you what you want, feeds you compliments, lures you in…" Spectra's eyes had a glint of fear that Danny didn't miss. "But it's the most powerful control I've ever witnessed."

"So, what?" Danny scratched his head. "Are we gonna go through some sort of training montage now? I don't really know how to get rid of him."

Spectra shrugged. "I don't know, I've never gotten this close before." Danny started to speak, but before the words escaped his throat he choked and lurched back. Spectra jolted and her core suddenly filled with icy fear; he was coming, she could feel it. "Fenton!" She yelled, but he had already been sucked into the deep recesses of his own mind. Colorful and still colorless eyes took their place in his sockets and slits concentrated sharply onto Spectra.

"Penny." The smirk that consumed his face gave Spectra a great chill down her spine.

"Dem…" She whispered quietly. Her eyes had widened after hearing his familiar yet distant voice. She remembered her past with him, remembered how she'd loved him once. Shaking slightly, she regained posture. "What are you doing inside of Fenton? What is your goal?"

Dementium chuckled lowly and made the earth vibrate. "I was drawn in by his power. You see Miss Spectra, as you like to call yourself now, he contains an energy I have not seen before. If I take him over, I can use that energy to gain my own form, so that I'm no longer shackled to the minds of others. The energy from separating his body and soul will be so great that a gap in time will form."

Dementium strode forward, growing nearer to Spectra. It took her a while to realize she was slowly backing away. "I will use that gap to gain my freedom." He whispered in her ear, suddenly up against her body. She gasped sharply and shoved him away; he merely laughed.

"Such an immature woman! Interesting you chose your form to be so superior to your years."

"Quiet." Penelope snapped, glaring into Dementium's close – _much too close, way too close _– eyes. "How dare you use someone like that."

"Ah, you see my darling," He scraped a claw slowly under her chin, "you're quite the hypocrite. You spend your days feeding off the insecurities of children, many of which you had yourself. This is not using someone?"

"Shut up!" Penelope screeched, reaching out for Dementium's throat and gripping it tightly. "You know nothing. I am using the energy, yes, but I am not harming them. I am not taking their soul and body and tearing them apart like a monster!"

Dementium cackled loudly, throwing back his head. "A monster, I've never heard that one." He smirked callously. "Just watch, Miss Penelope Spectra. I'll show you what a monster is truly like." Dementium exited Danny's immediate consciousness in a snap, and Danny swayed as he returned to his regular state so suddenly.

"Gah, my head." Danny mumbled, rubbing his scalp and shutting his eyes tightly. When he felt his eyes rearrange to adjust to the light, he opened them again and looked back to his host. "Spectra?"

Her face was paralyzed. She looked stone cold, like a stiff body straight as a board. "You alright?" He asked tentatively.

"No, I'm not." And with that, her face straight and solemn, she disappeared into the air. Danny looked around him a moment longer, then returned to the comfort of his bedroom.

* * *

><p>Danny lay falling asleep in his small, cozy bed, his eyes gently closed as he thought over the night's events at the park. He kept remembering the disturbing expression on Spectra's face, and how chilling it had been when she disappeared with her reaction.<p>

"_No, I'm not."_…

He drifted to sleep only to find himself in the prison he hoped he'd escaped from.

"Dementium!" He whispered frantically, jumping to a defensive stance in his familiar prison.

"Yes. Did you miss me, boy?" He said, white teeth glistening in the light streaming from above.

"Cut to the chase, what am I doing back here? I thought we were finished." Danny said curtly, narrowing his eyes to focus on where he assumed Dementium's eyes laid.

"Finished? Oh, hardly, little Halfling! Our journey has just begun!" Dementium swept his pitch black arm around to his side and the ground became quick sand, into which Danny sunk down to his knees in a matter of seconds. He grunted, trying to pull himself from the muck by flying, but it was no use. 'Well, at least I'm not sinking more.' He said to himself.

"Really nice, Dementium, so scary." Danny smirked a bit despite himself, only to have the walls around him melt away and feel an invisible fist punch deeply into his lower chest. He coughed, collapsing in on his injured chest as he tried to catch his breath. "Ah, good shot…" He said between gasps, smiling slightly as he wiped the spit from the corners of his mouth.

"What will you do, little Phantom?" Dementium circled around Danny in seconds. "No way to move, no way to defend, no way to protect…" Dementium's smirk grew huge.

"What do you mean, what's going on?" Danny grew serious as he clenched his fists, only to receive another punch to the gut and fall into a second coughing fit.

"Your family, your friends, always in danger and yet you are not capable of being in more than one place at once. What will happen, if something comes in the way?" Dementium shot up to Danny quickly, and before Danny could react, a large pair of soulless eyes caught his and he fell into a trance.

Dementium fed him countless images; Jazz beaten to unconsciousness, Sam bleeding out, Tucker pulling needles from his fingernails, Dad yelling at the top of his lungs, Mom screaming, everyone dying, _everyonescared, needhelpcan'tmove—_

Danny cried out in frustration, tears streaming down his face as he tried desperately to remove himself from his cement prison. "Let me go! I can help them, that won't happen!"

Dementium roared. "Who says? You're worthless, you can't possibly save them all! Who do you choose?" He ran through the images again and a fresh round of tears rolled down Danny's cheeks. "You cannot save them all, one must be sacrificed. Which?"

"I don't know!" Danny yelled, beating his fists onto the ground and feeling his knuckles grind into each other painfully. "I can't choose!"

"Then one by one they will all DIE!" Dementium screeched loudly, raising his head to roar like a monster, and he grabbed Danny's sides with his claws and sunk deep inside before Danny could scream.

Danny woke up with the scream he hadn't been able to make caught in his throat. He stayed in bed for a long time. He noticed the blood streaming down his sides and staining his sheets, but he didn't care. His eyes were leaking small constant streams of salty tears that he could not control. Real or not, he had just seen all of his closest people suffering and dying without being able to help. He was numb.

Jazz knocked on his door and came in despite having received no response, but he didn't mind. He had to fight the images of Jazz on a street corner bloody and dying of blood loss and internal injuries from making it into the forefront of his mind, but it happened anyway. When Jazz let out a small cry, he didn't care. He felt little except some guilt for worrying her. But she was dead anyway, right? What did he care for an image?

She snapped in his face but it was a million miles away. It was only when she slapped his face—and hard—that Danny snapped out of it. "Huh?" He mumbled, eyes receiving a bit of light as he regained full consciousness.

"Danny! Thank goodness, you're bleeding everywhere!" Jazz motioned for him to sit up, but when he tried on his own he was reminded of the injuries sustained along his sides. She pulled him up slowly and peeled his blood-soaked shirt over his head in order to wrap gauze around him tightly.

"You're not dead?" He asked quietly, though half-heartedly. Jazz started.

"Of course not! I'm just fine Danny, I promise you." She continued to wind the gauze around his chest and, when finished, she tied a small not at the top quickly. She took his shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. "Danny, I'm fine. Nothing happened. Alright?"

He nodded and she bustled away with his bloody sheets in her hands. She was muttering about getting the stains out as she scampered down the stairs when he finally got up to get dressed. He strode into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror; he looked like a wreck. His eyes were sunken in and his mouth looked permanently forced into a frown. He tried to smile to fix the picture, but it just made him look demented, so he let it be as he brushed his teeth.

He tried to continue as normal, he really did, but the images were haunting him everywhere that he went. His father looked half dead when he first laid eyes on him, causing him to jump. When his mother asked what was wrong he had to lie to her, and he heard her scream his name deep within the back of his mind.

* * *

><p>"Are you going to make it?" Tucker asked, voice steady and serious. "You can go home if you want."<p>

Sam placed her hand on his arm, trying to be reassuring, but it felt like tiny needles on Danny's skin. "You're obviously very upset Danny, you look dead right now!"

"White as a ghost dude," Tucker chimed in, "But all joking aside, you should take care of yourself, man. I haven't seen you smile once all day. Not even at my lame jokes in class!"

Danny shrugged, looking down. "I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize!" Sam smacked his arm. "You're so weird sometimes. It's fine, it's just that we're worried you're not taking care of yourself right."

"I'm fine guys." He gave them both a hard stare. "I'm taking care of it."

"Obviously not well enough!" Sam cried out, her eyebrows furrowed in frustration. "You don't want our help? Fine!" She stood abruptly from the table.

"Sam!" Tucker yelled, and he pulled her away quickly to just far enough that Danny's sensitive ears couldn't hear.

Danny sighed softly. He didn't like being treated like a kid with a mental disorder who couldn't handle anything. He wondered when things would be okay.

The cold, dark grip of Dementium's clawed hands sunk into his heart. He could feel it spreading.

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><p>Yay! Review please! Thanks to my past reviewers as well.<p>

~One Hit Wonders Anonymous.


	6. Chapter Six

Hey guys, back from vacation! Hope you enjoy the update, I'm excited as things start to really get to the good part!

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><p><strong>Chapter Six<strong>

Sam strode back to the table, her eyes averted. "I'm sorry," she muttered, and though it sounded impersonal Danny could tell it was genuine, "Just been stressed out. You're worrying the crap out of me, Danny."

Danny sighed softly. "I know, I'm worrying everyone important to me these days. I'm sorry, just if I get into a weird mood snap me out of it, okay? Before something happens." Tucker and Sam nodded; Tucker had joined the table as Sam concluded her apology.

"What something could happen though?" Tucker asked, taking a bite out of his pepperoni sandwich.

"I don't know." Danny said simply, shrugging. "We'll have to see. Don't we usually just go with the flow with ghost stuff?"

"Yeah, but this isn't a normal ghost, Danny, we have to be prepared if something crazy starts happening." Sam pointed out.

"Yeah, like if you start screaming and convulsing with foam coming out of your mouth." Tucker snickered, but Sam smacked his arm.

"Shut up, that could actually happen! Not saying it will, Danny," She snapped her eyes to him worriedly, and Danny got the impression she was trying to comfort him, so he nodded and she smiled.

Suddenly, the all too familiar screams of his peers hit Danny's ears a few moments before Sam and Tucker heard them, as they were far in the distance. "There's your cue," Sam said, jumping in front of Danny to form cover, "Go get 'em."

"Hopefully it's something normal," Danny muttered as he transformed behind their backs, and he shot forward while invisible to the location of the screams. They grew closer, and when he reached his destination, he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that it was his regular opponent, Skulker.

"I don't have much time for this," Danny said, forming a fighting position in midair as he materialized in front of Skulker, "so make it quick."

"Ah, the infamous ghost child is here to play again." Skulker sneered, moving to his own fighting stance and preparing his weapons for fire. "Then let's get this over with." He shot his first missiles toward Danny but he evaded it easily.

"Skulker, you always do that first, but it never works. Why do you waste the ammo?" Danny fake-yawned, enraging the metallic ghost.

"You'll be mine one day!" Skulker yelled, and as he attacked Danny began to move, but suddenly, his body froze. The chilling laughter of Dementium rang through his mind and literally paralyzed his limbs, allowing Skulker to hit him in the chest with an ectoplasmic beam.

Danny gasped and moved back, now able to move his body, and tried to catch his breath as he tried to overcome the confusion in his head.

"You never give me a hit Phantom, are you growing soft?" Skulker smirked and fired another round of missiles after Danny, but he was able to evade the attack as normal.

"Weird," Danny muttered, "but so is everything right now in my life so I shouldn't be surprised."

"Talking to yourself?" Skulker moved in to a clash into Danny's crossed defensive arms. He yelped and pulled back, the metal having bruised his outer arms in the collision.

"Shut up, I'm sick of you." Danny said crossly, and he fired a quick volley of ectoplasmic blasts toward Skulker, growing faster until his opponent could no longer keep up with the attack. Skulker became disoriented and Danny gripped his head firmly before pulling the skeleton's head from the case and sucking Skulker's true form into his thermos. "Finally."

Danny landed, and suddenly the crowd that had formed around the fight began to cheer. His name rung in his ears as the students gave him courage and he smiled brightly. However the cheering lasted only a few moments.

Danny spasmed and reached for his stomach as he fell to his knees. He pulled his hand back from his stomach to find green slimy ectoplasm on his fingers and palm.

Danny looked around wildly, trying to find an exit, and finally just sunk through the ground, much to the disdain of the students surrounding him. He flew back to the table at which Sam and Tucker were waiting for him, and appeared underneath it, gasping for breath.

"Danny," Sam muttered urgently, crawling under the table. "What's going on?"

"I don't.. know.." Danny gasped, breathing desperately and gripping his chest. Suddenly his eyes rolled back into his head, and he passed out.

"Danny!" Tucker and Sam both yelled out with worry.

Then, as though a scene from a horror movie, Danny's body began to reanimate as though on puppet strings. His head swung forward and his arms raised limply into the air, pulling himself up out from under the table as Sam and Tucker scrambled to get away.

Danny's eyes were pitch black, Sam noticed with a start and a sharp gasp. His mouth formed a straight line as though it were sewn together and his limbs hung limply, though he hovered straight upward in the air before them.

"Danny..?" Sam asked quietly, not able to hide the shake from her voice. She could have sworn she heard Danny's voice far away ask her name, but the body of her friend did not stir. "What is this, what's going on?"

Dementium suddenly shot through Danny's body. An unnatural twitch scorched through his limbs and his head shot up to the sky, eyes suddenly swirling with every color possible. "This, children," Dementium's voice rung out deep and slow, "is how your friend will look when I finally break his soul."

"You can't do that!" Tucker yelled, narrowing his eyes and giving him a strong stare despite his shaking knees.

"Oh I assure you that I can, and I will." Dementium laughed demonically, causing both Sam and Tucker to flinch and shudder at the image of their friend so demented.

"As I speak to you," Dementium began, "I am also talking to little Daniel. I am showing him all of the things that could possibly go wrong. They won't, of course, but what does he know?" Dementium smirked his awful smirk that stretched all the way across Danny's face.

"Don't you dare, you bastard." Sam spit venomously, but Dementium just laughed in her face.

"Your friend will break, he will become my body. I have been searching for a body worthy of my power for centuries, and finally I have found it. I will not let pesky children take it from me!" Dementium suddenly slipped from Danny's body, and he collapsed onto the ground. Sam and Tucker ran to his side, and before he could wake up they were already tending to the wound on his stomach.

"What…" Danny murmured, his eyelashes fluttering. He quickly snapped his eyes open and shot straight up, pushing Sam and Tucker back unintentionally. His face crumpled before his eyes, and he suddenly pulled them both into a big bear hug.

"Oh god you guys, never leave my sight, okay?" Danny muttered, biting his lip. Sam could have sworn she saw a tiny glistening tear sneak from Danny's cheek as he hugged them and they hugged back.

"Danny, what he showed you won't happen, I promise." Sam said, looking him in the eyes.

"Yeah, don't worry about us, we've been fighting alongside you for forever! We can handle whatever comes at us." Tucker smirked cockily.

Danny allowed a small smile to grace his lips before getting to his feet and looking around him at the barren grounds of Casper High. "I think everyone's gone in from lunch by now, think we should too?"

* * *

><p>A knock rang on Danny's bedroom door softly as he began to lie down for bed that night. "Come in," he said loudly but not too loudly. He knew it was his mother by the way she knocked; Jazz knocked with authority, his father pounded the door, and his mother seemed to peck it just slightly with her knuckles.<p>

"Danny, sweetie?" Maddie Fenton said softly, walking into her son's bedroom and expertly avoiding the mess on his floor. "I wanted to talk to you a bit before bed, is that alright?"

Danny nodded. "Your father and I have noticed you've been acting differently lately, honey. Is something going on at school?" When he shook his head no, she continued. "You're not staying up late playing video games, are you? You're starting to get bags under your eyes."

"Look, Mom," Danny started, sighing slightly as he tried to think of how to speak to her, "I've just been having trouble sleeping and it's been messing with school and friends and stuff. It's no big deal, I promise." He winced internally at the lie; he wanted her help desperately, as he always did. He often wished he could crawl into his mother's arms and tell her all his real worries, and tell truths, like he used to as a small child.

"Should we go to the doctor?" She rubbed her hand over his shoulder so gently that it did not hurt his sore muscles.

"No, it's not that serious." _Yet._ "But I'll let you know if it gets worse, okay Mom?"

"Okay," she smiled and kissed him on the forehead goodnight, "Goodnight Danny, see you in the morning."

Danny smiled back. "Goodnight Mom." She slipped outside the door, but before she could leave, he hurriedly tried to stop her. "Wait, Mom?"

She stuck her head through the doorway with a questioning look on her face.

"I love you."

She smiled so brightly he wondered if her face might break. "I love you too, sweetie." She closed his door with a quiet click, and he closed his eyes to a night of easy rest and not a single peep from Dementium.

* * *

><p>"And it's because of this that Catherine chose Edgar over Heathcliff, because wealth and status proved more important to her than love…" Lancer droned on, pointing to the abbreviated notes he had written on the board in the front of the classroom. Danny's eyes grew out of focus as he rested his chin in his crossed arms on his desk.<p>

"Man, this stuff is so boring." Tucker groaned, whispering over to Danny sitting next to him in the two-person desk set up of the classroom. Danny didn't even answer, instead yawning dramatically and making Tucker snicker.

He thought idly of Sam, who was in the classroom one over to the right, in history. He reached down to itch at his irritated foot. However, Danny was nervous. He felt tired and felt the crushing will to close his eyes and sleep, something he was now dreading each night and avoiding as long as possible.

"Hey, you awake in there?" Tucker asked, and Danny nodded slightly, yawning again.

"Tired as hell though." Despite the deep sleep he'd had the night before, he was still in need of more to catch up for all that he had lost.

"Take a nap!" Tucker nudged him. "Not like this stuff matters anyway."

"But I can't fall asleep." Danny groaned.

"Mr. Fenton, Mr. Foley, please pay attention!" Mr. Lancer snapped, gaining their swift albeit lazy attention. "This is going to be on your test next week!"

They nodded and Danny lifted his head to watch the board and Lancer's notes, but the letters and words on the board quickly began to blur until he could no longer read them, and his head drooped. He tried valiantly to keep his eyes open, but it was too late, and as Lancer continued his lecture, Danny's mind slipped into the deep, unrelenting prison of Dementium once more.

"Sleeping in school, Daniel?" Dementium sat upon his throne, his legs crossed in a seemingly relaxed manner.

"What do you want?" Danny sneered, but the shadow did not respond to his seething question.

"How about your sister?" He suggested, fixing his gaze on Danny, and suddenly a vine-like cord wrapped around Danny's arms and legs. He fought briefly, but found it unhelpful and drooped in its clutches.

"What about her? I swear if you do anything to her—" Dementium cackled and Danny snarled in frustration.

"Oh Daniel, it's not what I'll do to her, it's what _you_ will."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, it's simple, do I really have to spell it out?" He gleamed. "You're destroying her."

"I would never hurt my own sister." Danny glared into his impossible eyes.

"Oh, so you think, boy." He brought up a swirling light before Danny's cage, and an image of Jazz in a destroyed alleyway appeared. She looked tired and dirty, as if she'd been running for a long time. Her clothes were slightly tattered and a limp was prominent in her left leg.

"What is this?" Dementium laughed loudly.

"This is your fault!" Blue flames licked the sides of the image and attacked Danny viciously, though they did not hurt. "Is it not your status that puts your friends, your family in danger? You inadvertently harm them, it is your responsibility! Therefore it is your fault if anyone is to die!"

The Jazz in the image turned only to find a huge pillar of concrete falling fast toward her. She let out a horrifically realistic scream before it crushed her chest and left her crumpled in the street. "No, Jazz!" Danny yelled, reaching for her only to be shocked by the cage. "Don't do this, what have I done to you?" Tears began to fill his eyes as he watched his sister lose consciousness, a pool of blood growing beneath her. Dementium cackled. "Why are you doing this to me, you were different with Spectra!"

"Spectra?" Dementium screeched loudly, rearing up and shooting into Danny's face. He dug his claws into Danny's exposed leg and arm to jostle him roughly. "What has she done, where is she? Disgusting little wretch!" Dementium howled and Danny's prison faltered. "She will not ruin my plans!"

Suddenly the image of Jazz surrounded Danny, and he was within the scene Dementium had created. It looked so real, though each time he tried to reach for her his hand went through the apparition. "Jazz, Jazz!" He yelled; the image was real to him as she struggled to breathe. He began to grow increasingly desperate as he clawed at the earth, though he could not reach her.

Finally, Jazz's eyes drooped shut, and her hand slid from her stomach. She was dead.

"Jazz!" Danny gasped, his head shooting up from the desk, breath coming in short bursts.

"Mister Fenton?" Mr. Lancer asked. One eyebrow rose in a look that made him look amused. "Care to share what that outburst was about?" The other students snickered, but Danny couldn't care less about them.

His mind was racing. His mouth felt cemented shut and he felt the color drain from his face as he watched the staged death of his sister over and over in his mind. "Ah, I need to go get a drink, Mr. Lancer."

Sam and Tucker moved around him as the ever present guardians, demanding to come with him. Lancer, though he was slightly concerned by the pale complexity of his student, knew that he had no chance in stopping them and simply waved them off, continuing the lecture uninterrupted.

As soon as the trio left Mr. Lancer's room, Danny raced to the classroom he knew Jazz resided in during the period, much to the confusion of Sam and Tucker. He drowned out their cries of confusion and continued his march until he saw the real physical form of his sister, diligently taking notes, and pressed his back to the wall, sliding down with a huge exhale of held breath.

"Danny!" Sam snapped, leaning down and gripping his shoulders, ignoring the wince Danny made when she touched the cuts in his arm. "What's going on, what was that back there?"

"I'll go get the nurse, I think you're bleeding, man," said Tucker, making his way quickly down the hall and up the stairwell to the nurse's office.

"Jazz…" Danny mumbled, his eyes spaced out and his face blank. "He killed her, he keeps showing me…"

"Dementium?" She murmured, softening her touch and relaxing slightly. They were alone now, it felt safer.

"He's inside my mind, he wants my mind." Danny suddenly made direct eye contact with Sam, but they were not his familiar blue. Sam gasped and recoiled; incredible colors she'd never seen before were swirling in circles around his morphing pupils, the unquestionable sign of Dementium. The feeling of safety disappeared. He growled, his voice not his own, darkened and deep and evil. His lips curled into a foreign smirk. "He's mine, girl."

Sam quickly smacked him hard on the cheek, pressing a mark into his skin. The impossible eyes sunk away and returned to the familiar soft blue, blank in thought and confusion. "Oh god," Danny whispered, his eyes widening in realization, "he's figured out my head, Sam, what do I do?"

Sam snapped out of the shock that overcame her when she saw the unearthly face of a monster take over her best friend. "Danny, listen to me. Calm down." Danny had begun to breathe faster, his eyes wild and twitching. "He can't control you, he can't. You are the only one who can hold your sanity."

"You don't know." Danny's eyes appeared hollow suddenly. "It's my fault."

Sam was about to respond, her expression jumbled and worried, when the nurse rounded the corner with Tucker. "Mr. Fenton, are you alright? Will you be able to make it up the stairs?"

Danny's expression flipped like a coin and he suddenly smiled, though his face remained white and his eyes sunken. His face was suddenly faking normalcy in a snap. "Yes, I'll make it, Mrs. Jones. Thanks." Sam helped him up, and he limped his way to the nurse using Sam's shoulders as a crutch.

"By the way, what happened to your leg?" She whispered, leaning in to Danny's face to catch what he would say, but she didn't expect the response.

"It was in the dream. The dream became real." His face was stone cold and frozen. "He's going to take my mind, Sam."

Sam's heart dropped to her toes. He was starting to give up.

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><p>Yay! Read and review please!<p> 


	7. Chapter Seven

Hello guys, here I am with Chapter Seven! On and on the plot goes, where it stops, nobody knows..

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><p>Chapter Seven<p>

"No, Danny, you can't give up on me. Danny!" Sam waved her hand in front of Danny's face frantically, making him blink his eyes repeatedly, though he did not budge. "Danny seriously, snap out of it, you're making me angry!" Sam said loudly, but Danny remained silent.

"Would you come up to the nurse's office with me, Danny? I have to tend to whatever is bleeding." Danny suddenly stood mechanically, startling Sam, but he made no noise and showed barely a limp in his injured leg.

She trailed behind him, watching carefully how straight and unnatural his movements appeared. He made his steps up the staircase one leg at a time, which she found odd and strange looking. However, she realized it could have just been because of his leg.

They reached the nurse's office and she bandaged his leg and arm with barely a sound. When she asked tentatively what had happened, she received no answer, and though perplexed she allowed him to go silent. Sam watched with increasing worry.

"Danny, what's going on? Why aren't you talking?" She asked desperately, standing in front of him before he could walk back to class.

"Talking makes you unsafe." Danny said, startling Sam. He looked to her with dead eyes, his voice monotone and mouth a thin line. He pushed past her and continued to walk in the same mechanical way he had been since the event in Mr. Lancer's classroom. She stared after him with wide, fearful eyes.

Danny spent the rest of the day in total silence. His friends wrote him notes, poked him repeatedly, and even yelled in his ear on occasion, but still he would not open his mouth.

"Danny," Sam said, fidgeting and wringing her fingers under the table in lab, "You're really starting to freak me out. Please stop." But when she received no answer, she sighed, and realized that there wasn't much that she could do.

The day continued in relative quiet, as Tucker and Sam could only look to their silent friend in worry the time away without a sound from themselves. "It's like he's a puppet or something," Tucker whispered to Sam as they trailed behind Danny on their way home, "he just moves like he's on strings."

"What should we do?" Sam asked rhetorically and bit her lip, but she held back her emotions and set her brow straight when she came up with an idea. "We should spend the night with him."

"What?" Tucker questioned.

"You heard me; we'll sleep over at his house and make sure he doesn't do anything weird. It might be boring but if we find something that will help, I'm all for it." She put on the face that Tucker –and Danny when he wasn't unresponsive- recognized as her 'stubborn face'. Her eyes were narrowed and her mouth slightly pursed as she worried the inner part of her lip, a habit she developed for whenever she was thinking deeply.

"Well yeah, but what do you think it'll accomplish?" Tucker asked, turning onto the first street of their usual walk home.

"I don't know, but we have to do something, right? He said to snap him out of it if he got weird. We have to do something, Tucker." Sam said strongly, and Tucker nodded in agreement. They continued straight to Danny's house without a second glance at their own homes, determined to help their friend.

* * *

><p>"Wanna play some video games?" Tucker asked Sam, bored out of his mind. Danny hadn't done a thing but walk into his bed literally and fall asleep since they got home. Sam nodded, sighing quietly and taking a position up against Danny's bed while grabbing a controller. Tucker flipped on the television and they sat in silence as the game started up.<p>

"What do you think is going on?" Tucker asked again, his voice mellow and drawn out.

"I don't know, let's just not worry about it right now. I just want to relax." Sam said, letting out a small yawn as she selected her character on the screen.

"Good idea." Tucker said, leaning back. "Hey Sam, what do you think of all this? Sorry," He began after seeing Sam's annoyed expression, "I can't _not _talk about it, you know?"

"Yeah, I know. What do you mean?" Sam asked, turning to look at him briefly.

"Do you think maybe Danny's just going batshit or something? Like, what if his ghost half is just too much for him and it's taking over or something?"

"No," Sam said sternly, "There's something inside him, I know it. He's not the same. Just look at him!" They both looked over to Danny's bed to find his mouth hanging open, slight snoring noises coming from his nose. Tucker snickered. "Okay, he's fine now but when he's awake, he isn't the same person. He's not my best friend."

"I know what you mean," Tucker said, mashing a certain pattern into the controller and whispering a quiet "Yes!" as Sam's character flew from the screen, "He's been really creepy lately."

"Well, that's what we're here for, to check on him and make sure he's alright." Sam said, and they continued to play, even getting a few laughs out of the experience. Tucker realized with a start that there hadn't been much laughing lately with the heavy situation on them. He from them on made an effort to make Sam laugh and smile as much as possible.

They made it until midnight until they finally passed out on each other's shoulder, the television's screen blaring through the darkness of Danny's bedroom.

* * *

><p>"Good evening." Dementium said, catching Danny's attention as he lay in a dazed state on the cool rock ground.<p>

"Shut up, I don't care about your little games anymore." Danny said, his voice slurred and bored.

Dementium slid toward Danny nonchalantly, his body relaxed. "What about the little Samantha girl?" He began, scratching his chin jokingly, "I think she cares." Dementium said with a lilt in his tone, and Danny snapped to a sitting position quickly.

"What are you talking about? You won't touch her!" Dementium cackled loudly.

"I won't, but _you will!" _

"How..?" Danny asked, his eyes widening as the scene before him began to melt away.

"Allow me to show you, little Daniel… You will see the impact of your mistakes…" Dementium's voice trailed off into the distance as though he were floating far away.

Suddenly Danny was sent reeling into an alternate dimension, and he watched a scene play out in silent horror. He watched as his body transformed and the eyes of Dementium took over his own. "That's what I look like when that happens..?" He whispered rhetorically, horrified at his own appearance. Suddenly, his body's voice rang out in a demonic tone.

"You will not interfere!" His possessed body yelled, and before Danny could move to do anything his body scratched thin, deep marks across Sam's shoulder and upper chest.

"Sam!" Danny shrieked, clambering toward the image and trying to touch her as she fell to her knees, but all he grabbed was air. "How dare you?" He yelled at Dementium, who watched from behind. He merely chuckled devilishly.

"How dare _you."_ Dementium sneered. Danny snapped his attention back to Sam, who was pleading with the possessed Danny silently, but that Danny didn't care. He raised his hand, and with claws collected from ice, shot them straight through Sam's chest.

"SAM!" Danny screamed, his mouth hanging open in surprise. His possessed self pulled the claws from her chest and she fell onto her back, her mouth held open in a silent scream. Her eyes were wide open as blood seeped into the earth and soiled the dirt slowly. "Oh god, so much blood, so much blood!" Danny began to breathe faster and tried desperately to touch his severely injured friend, but once again, all he caught was air.

The image of Sam suddenly locked eyes with him directly, whispering his name. "Danny…" She said quietly.

"I'm here," He said, choking on a sob as he finished speaking.

He then watched with strange dedication as her eyes dulled and her muscles slackened. She had died.

Danny fell back, his own eyes growing dull in shock and terror. "Me…" He whispered hoarsely. "That was me…"

The world suddenly collapsed and Danny shot from his bed coughing and gasping for air, conscious and aware once more. The tears streamed from his eyes in a constant pace and he felt no obligation to stop them as his friends stirred from their positions on the ground. "Danny!"

Danny's eyes widened as they locked on Sam; she'd never looked so wonderful –so _alive_— in his memory. "Sam." He tackled her and hugged her so tightly she feigned being unable to breathe.

"Okay, down boy!" She laughed, hugging him back, before she realized he was shuddering as he held back sobs. "Danny..?" She pushed his shoulders back and tried to get a look at his face, but he hid it behind his too-long bangs.

"I'm sorry," His voice stuttered slightly and he hiccupped as he tried to hold back the noises in his throat, "but you guys have to get away from me." Danny wiped his eyes and stared intently toward his friends.

"What are you talking about, man? You finally came back from the dead!" Tucker said nervously, crawling closer to Danny slowly.

"No, get away!" Danny pushed away and backed up to his bed's headboard, breathing shallowly. "I'll hurt you, you can't be near me anymore."

"Danny, what happened?" Sam asked softly, reaching for his hand, but he just gave her a wild and panicked look before slipping through the wall and shooting off and away.

"That was weird…" Tucker muttered, pulling himself onto his feet.

"Yeah, let's follow him." Sam said sternly. Tucker silently agreed and the two rushed from the bedroom and toward the front door, only to be stopped by Jazz. "Look, Jazz, we don't have time—"

"Take me with you." Jazz interrupted, her eyes narrowed. "Something's going on with my baby brother and you're both going to fill me in, now."

Tucker gulped and nodded, pulling her through the doorway and following Sam, who was already halfway down the street. "So, there's this demon named Dementium," Tucker began, "and he's essentially trying to drive Danny insane so he can take his body as a host."

Jazz gasped. "How has he been getting hurt?"

Sam interrupted as she pulled out the navigator to find their friend. "Dementium attacks him in his dreams, and it becomes real. This time he went absolutely crazy when he saw me. I can only assume Dementium plans on killing me." She said stiffly and with a strength that defied her fear inside.

"I don't think so, Sam," Tucker began, worry in his voice, "he seems intent only on driving Danny crazy from the inside, he probably won't physically do anything to you."

"Wait wait wait, hold up," Jazz said, waving her arms in the air to stop their conversation, "so Dementium is in Danny's head, but is a real thing? This is what the nightmares he was talking about are!" She covered her mouth and gasped. "Oh no, has he cracked..?" She breathed a sigh of relief when Sam shook her head no.

"But he's coming close," Tucker said in addition, "He barely spoke a word today at school. It was really freaky."

Sam hushed them both. "I've got him, he's in the park."

The party inched their way through the iron gateway of the park and slowly approached their panicking friend. Danny was gasping for breath as he cried, on his knees beneath a street lamp. They all wanted so badly to run up to him and hug him, but knew he would just run away again.

"Danny..?" Sam whispered, knowing his ears would pick up the sound. Sure enough he perked up and through puffy eyes spotted the trio.

"Leave me, I'm a monster." He said dully, crouching low to the ground and hiding his face from his friends.

"Danny, snap out of it, we're not leaving." Sam snapped, and he looked up quickly to see her face. She looked serious.

"But I'll hurt you, like Dementium says." Danny sounded like an injured small child. He crouched down low with wide terrified eyes, as though protecting his wounded soul.

"Dementium is lying!" Jazz chimed in, stepping forward toward Danny but pausing when Sam put her hand out in front of her.

"Jazz…" Danny's eyes widened, and he suddenly snapped upright. "Jazz, get out of here, you'll die! Just like the dream…" Danny trailed off and his pupils grew large. "So much blood…" He muttered, and he suddenly began to spasm and howl in pain.

"Danny!" Jazz yelled in alarm, and the trio ran to Danny's side. He jerked and shuddered and coughed as his chest began to leak ectoplasm slowly.

"Don't… come closer, I'll hurt…" He gasped between fast breaths, before he dropped to a chilling limp pile in front of them. He suddenly was jerked up as though controlled and Jazz shrieked quietly in fear.

"Stupid, ignorant humans…" Dementium's voice suddenly growled; Danny's mouth barely moved. "You know nothing about how this works, do you?"

"What do you mean?" Jazz asked defiantly, though her voice shook.

"I'm taking your friend's sanity so easily I wonder how he managed to survive this long, in this cruel dark world." Dementium sneered, an unnatural image on Danny's untainted face. "Your friend, he hurts."

The trio looked to him in confusion. "Are you being sympathetic or what?" Tucker asked, his knees shaking.

"Sympathetic? I practically am Daniel Fenton! I feel all that he is feeling right now. He is feeling guilt, and it is you humans that give him this guilt." He looked into Sam's eyes specifically and she felt her hands shake in fear. "Particularly you."

"What?" Sam asked, "Why me?"

"He doesn't want you to get hurt, my dear." Danny's body flew up to her face and traced a finger along her jaw gently. "He's seen what he is going to do in the future. It is only mere instances away." Dementium smirked wildly like a savage beast. "And of course, he does not like it. He feels guilt for the stress he gives you, the pain he causes you. If given the chance, he would give that up.

"You see," Dementium concluded, "I am giving him that choice. By taking his mind's place, I am relieving him of that guilt. It has been incredibly easy to work this out of little Daniel."

"Don't say that!" Sam snarled angrily. "Danny's the strongest person I know!"

"Wrong!" Dementium boomed, glee evident in his tone. "He has a huge weakness, and that is you! All three of you, his parents, and every human on the planet are his weaknesses, because he is a self-sacrificing _idiot_." He snarled the insult menacingly.

Sam lunged forward but Tucker held her back, and Dementium laughed loudly and maniacally. "There's not much time, little girl. Try to save your little friend, but soon enough his body will be all mine to control for eternity. And it will be your fault."

Dementium abandoned Danny's body, and he fell to the ground unconscious.

No one moved as Danny slowly came to, groaning as he pulled his hands over his face. "What was it this time?" He asked tiredly.

"It was… it was nothing, Danny. All that matters is you're back." Sam said softly, crawling closer to him. "It's okay now, he won't come back."

"How do you know that?" Danny said, his voice slurred and low. "He always comes back."

"Don't say that!" Sam snapped, grabbing his arm and forcing him to look her in the eye. "You will defeat him, alright? We love you, you're not going to leave us. Not now, not ever." Sam said, sternly but gently.

Danny looked at her in surprise for a moment, before nodding slightly and hugging her loosely. They remained like that as rain began to fall, glistening in the light of the street lamp like a spider web.

"Let's go home, hm?" Sam said, pulling him to his feet gently so as to not disturb his constantly sustained injuries.

"Yeah…" He stuttered, stumbling after her. Jazz and Tucker took up the rear, and the rain played the dirge that lead the group to the house and to the introduction to the conclusion of their nightmare.

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><p>Hope you enjoyed! Please leave me a review. :3<p> 


	8. Chapter Eight

Hey lovies! Happy Thanksgiving to my Americans! Hope you enjoy.

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><p>Chapter Eight<p>

The rest of the evening continued as a normal evening would, ghost fighting and ghost talk aside. Tucker and Sam left Danny and Jazz's house later in the night after the rain had ceased, and the older sister would not let the younger brother be alone. Danny scoffed, but he appreciated it internally.

"I'm not a baby, Jazz."

"Oh I know, little brother, I'm just over protective." Jazz said with a huge smile on her face, making Danny only roll his eyes. "Are you alright though? I mean seriously." She asked again, and Danny sighed softly.

"Yes, I'm fine Jazz, I promise. No more freaking out."

"Well, I have a legitimate reason to make sure you're okay! You were really out of it back there." Jazz said, voice gaining a somewhat desperate tone as she spoke.

"I know, but I promise, I feel fine now Jazz." Danny encouraged, causing Jazz to sigh that time.

"Okay, if you insist, little brother." She shot him a small smile. "Get some sleep now, okay?" She ruffled up Danny's hair, much to his chagrin, and leapt from Danny's bed quickly to avoid his counterattack.

"Goodnight, Jazz!" Danny yelled in mock anger.

"Goodnight, little hero." Jazz said softly, her smile growing at the sight of the blush on Danny's face. "Sweet dreams!"

"Yeah, you too." Danny said, though his smile vanished when Jazz clicked his door shut. He sincerely doubted he would have sweet dreams.

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><p>Danny was again in Dementium's lair, though he was not locked up or held down by any means. Instead, he appeared sitting upon a throne-like chair, next to one that was filled with Dementium's black shadow. "Good evening, tonight is very exciting indeed."<p>

"Why? What do you have planned for me now?" Danny asked, scowling at Dementium gruffly.

"You see Daniel, tomorrow is the day that you will finally… snap." Dementium smirked, chuckling as though he found the entire situation humorous.

"Not according to me, and that's kinda important." Danny said, narrowing his eyes. "Why do you say that?"

"Because dear Daniel, I have had much experience. I know when my victim is about to crack and I can see it in your eyes."

"My eyes?" Danny questioned, cocking an eyebrow. Dementium's smirk grew just as malicious as ever.

"Why don't you take a look?" He offered, pointing to an old dilapidated mirror in the corner of the room they resided in. Danny took a hesitant step from his chair and then took strong strides until he reached the mirror. He gasped in horror at what his eyes showed.

Danny's eyes were a deep, pitch black. They looked like two pits upon his face, like two lumps of coal with no center and no end. He stepped back, terrified by the image he saw. "You're lying! I'm not like this!"

"Oh, but you are!" Dementium cackled. "And you will be like this until my mind takes yours' place. They are black because your mind is slowly fissuring into tiny little pieces, pieces I have been picking up and collecting for days and days. It is the end for you, boy," Dementium's voice rose in volume, "and I have WON!"

* * *

><p>Danny snapped up in his bed, panting and gasping rapidly. "Oh god, he said it was today, it's today…" He panicked even though he wasn't sure what he was talking about himself, leaping from his bed and pulling clothes on quickly. Not bothering to brush his hair, he rushed his way over to his friends' houses and grabbed each of them.<p>

"Danny, what's going on?" Sam asked loudly over the whistling wind, but Danny wouldn't reply to neither her nor Tucker as he shot through the air, bringing them to his house and finding Jazz in a similar fashion. He had them all congregate in the kitchen.

"Guys, he said it was today. I'm going to go crazy today. So, you have to stop me." Danny said strongly, his eyes focused on each of them for short amounts of time. "Kill me before it happens." He suddenly procured a long knife and handed it to Tucker, staring him down.

"What?" Dude, I can't kill you!" Tucker said, floundering over words and putting the knife on the counter. "Danny , you're not making much sense."

"I agree," Jazz jumped in, "Why would we ever kill you?" She asked, terror in her voice.

"Because, if you don't I'll become Dementium's new body, and if that happens then there won't be a way to stop him then! It has to be done, it has to-…" Danny suddenly blanked out, his eyes growing dull and hands slackening.

"Danny, you in there man?" Tucker asked, waving his hand over Danny's face. Danny snapped out of it quickly, blinking frantically and looking around.

"Sorry, something came over me. Anyway, we have to do something."

"Like what?" Sam asked.

"We could do what we did the last time something weird happened." Tucker interjected. "We could just hang around and be here in case something happens."

"Sounds like a good idea." Jazz said, nodding as Tucker explained. "Don't worry Danny, we'll be here for you. Nothing's going to happen."

Danny suddenly grew downcast, averting his gaze to the floorboards and worrying his fingers together. "I hope you're right."

* * *

><p>The group spent the day relaxing in the house, watching television and talking, and for once, Danny felt okay, but the feeling didn't last long. Suddenly a slow, painful itch began to grow underneath his eyes, and he kept rubbing them periodically with no relief in sight.<p>

"Ugh, my eyes are killing me." He complained, itching desperately at them. Sam, Jazz and Tucker all leaned forward to get a closer look. As they tried to catch a glimpse of his eyes he continued to scratch at them until he started to practically gouge his eyes out, whining and yelping in pain.

"They look fine, but- Danny...?" Sam asked tentatively, moving closer to him, but he snarled viciously and shoved her back. Danny began to pant like a dog, his hands over his face. He suddenly yelped loudly, causing the trio to jump. "Danny!" Sam exclaimed again, but by moving toward him he only moved away. Finally, after many yelps and whimpers, Danny raised his head slowly. The group gasped; his eyes were a horrible black hue.

"What is this, what's going on?" Sam yelled, only making Danny more tense, though Danny was not the real Danny that she and Tucker and Jazz knew. He suddenly transformed, dashed through the front door and shot away through the air, with the trio in hot pursuit.

They followed him all the way to a remote hill at the outskirts of Amity Park, where he stopped, twitching and having spasms violently. Danny howled like an animal, the shriek causing both Sam and Tucker to cover their ears and wince.

"Danny, snap out of it!" Jazz yelled. All three were horrified at what they next saw.

Danny was arching his back in pain, his mouth open in a silent scream and arms outstretched. The muscles over his entire body flexed and contracted, before rippling madly and snapping. He howled once more as his arms grew longer, thinner, and ten times as strong in moments.

"Danny!" Sam yelled, and before Tucker or Jazz could stop her she ran toward her tortured friend, reaching for him. "Danny, you're okay! Don't let him take you!"

Suddenly Danny's eyes switched from their pain-filled blue into the multicolor irises of Dementium and she recoiled sharply. "Don't interfere!" Dementium roared, sending a hateful glare that Sam was surprised was possible to express on Danny's kindly face. "He will become mine!"

"Not on my watch!" Sam reached into her pocket for the small-sized ecto-gun. "Sorry Danny," she whispered, before shooting toward her best friend's demented body. Danny's body spasmed and shuddered, but he did not fall or move from his place. Dementium's haunting eyes locked on Sam, and before she knew it, he had jumped in front of her and raised his hand.

"You will _not _interfere!" He repeated, shrieking and bringing his hand down upon her chest. Sam gasped and yelped loudly, staggering back as she felt razor-thin claws slice into her shoulder and across her collar bone.

Danny suddenly cried out and stumbled backward, gripping his head and causing small droplets of blood to form at his scalp. "No!" He shouted shortly, and his eyes flickered to green once more. "Sam! Oh god Sam, are you okay? I can't control him, I can't!" He yelled, disoriented and terrified as he continued to back away.

"You all have to get away from me, he'll hurt you!"

"No," Sam protested, putting pressure on the deepest part of the cuts she sported, "I'm not going anywhere."

Danny's eyes reflected great internal conflict and pain. "He told me this would happen. I didn't believe him but I do now, look at you!" His eyes suddenly dulled. He studied the red staining Sam's hand before stumbling and falling. "So much blood…"

"Danny, no!" Sam lunged, but Danny was suddenly engulfed in a great blackened windstorm. His body shut down and he fell to the floor, but try as she might Sam could not break into his new prison. Tucker and Jazz joined at her sides and they could only hold each other with worry as they watched through the windy veil. Danny twisted and twitched and turned on the sullied ground beneath him.

* * *

><p>Danny rose from the ground in a pure white room without walls or ceilings. He groaned as he held his head in his hands; a massive headache was pounding at his skull. "Ugh, what is this?"<p>

"This," boomed the all-too-familiar voice of Dementium, "is where I have resided for the past two thousand years."

"Pretty dreary." Danny said, and to his surprise, Dementium laughed almost amiably.

"It is not much, but it is home."

"Why so friendly all of a sudden?" Danny asked, his eyebrow cocked in confusion, "You've been horrible to me in every other instance."

"Because," Dementium said, a smile on his chapped and curled black lips, "I will have your body soon, and this will be your new home for the rest of eternity."

Danny paused, trying to soak in what Dementium had just said. "Wait, what?"

"When I take your body," Dementium continued, "I will occupy your brain and therefore where your mind currently resides. Energy cannot be created nor destroyed, so your mind will have to go somewhere. When the process is complete, you will remain inside my prison."

"So I'll be stuck here?" Danny asked, somewhat horrified.

"Yes." Dementium's voice rang strong and true. "You always have the option of taking my route and becoming a demon yourself, of course, and you can take another's body for your own."

"I could never do that," Danny spat, "that would cause another person to go into this place and I couldn't do that to another human."

"As you wish," Dementium said aloofly, "but you should get used to the wide open space here. It will no longer be mine." He insisted, a growl creeping into his voice.

"You can't destroy me, you can't take my body." Danny said, equally as strong.

"I can and I will!" Dementium howled. "The process has already begun! You can see how I am beginning to fade, yes? I am leaving this place and you are joining it, and the process is being completed as we speak!"

"No!" Danny yelled, terrified. "I won't let you!"

"You already did boy, when you gave up fighting with me. I weakened your soul and now I can place you wherever I want!"

Danny remained quiet. He thought of his friends and his family, and felt sorrow drown his heart as he realized they would never see him again. It was as his eyes began to water in defeat that he realized the true power he held within him. "No." He said, his voice echoing into the deep emptiness of the white space.

"What?" Dementium turned back to look at him, a chilling glare in his impossible eyes. "No?" NO?"

Danny interjected quickly, before Dementium could speak again. "I have people who care about me, I have things to do! I won't let you take my body, not now, not ever!" Danny yelled, taking a strong defiant step toward Dementium. "No!" Dementium let out a deafening roar and the white space shattered like glass, startling Danny. Suddenly, he was back within the swirling black vortex of wind and energy that had consumed him not long ago.

He opened his eyes and gasped for breath, feeling his mind within himself and his sanity creeping back. "Did I do it?" He asked himself quietly, only to hear the loud, shrieking, tearing scream of Dementium in the sky.

The clouds cracked and from the deep gray clouds clawed Dementium in his true form. Danny looked away in disgust. Black tendrils shot from Dementium's slimy wet body. His eyes were like rhinestones in a pile of mud, his claws and teeth jutting out from filth. He appeared to be a perpetually melting reptile with the black material slipping and shooting from his slippery skin.

A scream pierced through to Danny's ear and he realized it was Jazz's, and when he whipped around he saw his friends through the swirling energy keeping him trapped at his spot. "Run!" He screamed as loud as he could to his friends, but they couldn't hear through the whistling windy prison. His eyes grew wild and wide in panic.

"Daniel Phantom, I will have your body!" Dementium roared as lightning struck and thunder boomed under his voice. "Whether you want me to or not, it is mine!"

"No!" Danny yelled at the top of his lungs, and he shot a quick burst of ectoplasm straight into Dementium's face. He roared and whined, before climbing down from the sky through Danny's vortex.

Danny gaped in horror and tried to shoot his way through the wind, but it was to no avail. He turned around just in time to find Dementium's claws swiping at his exposed chest, and he crossed his arms to evade the attack.

"Accept your fate, you horrible little wretch!" Dementium snarled, his voice echoing in thousands on demonic voices as he clawed voraciously at Danny's body, not taking the time to aim in his fury. "If you will not give me your body you will perish!"

"Fine!" Danny yelled, shooting a blast into Dementium's chest, though it did little to throw the demon off. "It's better than being your puppet!"

Dementium howled and reared back, giving Danny the chance he'd been waiting for. He shot a short, powerful blast right into Dementium's gooey underbelly. Dementium writhed in silent pain and fell purposefully forward onto his front claws, tearing into the dirt and gravel underneath him.

"WRETCHED FOOL!" Dementium shrieked, spittle slipping between his humongous razor-sharp teeth as he screamed so loudly that Danny and his friends had to cover their ears at the sound.

Suddenly, the swirling of Danny's prison stopped dead in its tracks and fell to the ground. Danny scrambled back to his friends, defending them with narrowed eyes, but Dementium did not attack. He merely seethed, breath entering and exiting his body through his teeth in a way that produced a hissing sound.

"This is not the end, Phantom. I can tell that I will not be able to beat you down enough to take your body, but now you know too much." Dementium laughed crazily, his eyes shining and lips curled into a smirk of insanity. "You will die by my hand this time tomorrow!" With those words, Dementium rose back into the sky, a burbling, dripping mess of black liquefied flesh. He disappeared into the clouds, with one last chuckle to rumble over the field in which Danny and his friends cowered.

The four all visibly slackened their muscles, relaxing for the first time in what felt like months. Danny collapsed to the ground, groaning and closing his eyes as he bit his lip. "This time tomorrow, huh?" He mumbled into the dirt. "Maybe this nightmare will finally end."

He suddenly remembered Sam, and snapped to his knees, ignoring the protests of his muscles. "Sam! Oh god are you alright?" He crawled over to her quickly; she was leaning against a large rock.

"Psh, nothing I can't handle, ghost boy." Sam said to him, a joking expression on her face, however Danny could easily see the pain deeper in her eyes. When he sent her a questioning look, she waved him off. "It's nothing I haven't dealt with before, I'll be fine, I promise. It's not even that deep!" She said with a smile. Though Danny was not fully convinced, he nodded, and sent her a small smile of his own.

"Dementium isn't in my head anymore." Danny said suddenly, surprising everyone.

"How can you tell?" Jazz asked, helping Sam to her feet and urging Tucker to do the same.

Danny shrugged. "The weight is gone. Dementium was like this twenty pound weight constantly on my chest, between my lungs. But I can't feel it anymore. Honestly I feel great right now!" He said excitedly, growing more and more tense as time went on. "I need to go fly around for a bit. I'll be back at the house in an hour or so, I just need to get this out of my system." Jazz nodded with a smile and Danny shot into the air. The remaining trio could hear his laughter on the wind as he looped and circled the treetops and buildings.

Sam allowed herself the luxury to cry out in pain after he left, falling to her knees once more. "Finally, he's gone." She said, panting just slightly. Jazz and Tucker went to each side of her, worry etched in their brows. "That was not an ordinary scratch." Sam muttered, lifting her shirt from the wound. Tucker looked away in embarrassment, but Jazz gasped as she saw the marks from Danny's claws on her collarbone and chest.

The wound looked red and swollen like most scratch wounds would be, however the points where the claws made entry were glowing a sickly ectoplasmic green. Jazz could see a thin line of the lime green color throughout each cut mark, and they looked to be glowing. She pulled up the shreds of her shirt remaining and Tucker looked back timidly. "Is it bad..?"

"Let's just say it isn't good." Jazz said, a rough sigh exiting her throat. "Well, let's get you to the lab and patch you up, okay Sam?" Sam nodded and rose to her feet, wincing as the movement of her arm caused her pain in her cuts.

"They hurt more than normal…" Sam said quietly, studying what was visible through the holes in her shirt.

"I'll see if I can disinfect them somehow from the ectoplasmic energy when we get to the lab. Do you need help walking?" Jazz asked, eyes softening like a mother's.

"Oh I'm fine, don't need any help." Sam said. Tucker snorted at her stubbornness, but one glare from her told him to be quiet. "Let's get going." She stated, and the group made its way to the Fentonworks laboratory to attempt to help Sam, quickly before Danny saw. No one wanted to bother him with the difficult news.

They would realize too late how large of a mistake it was to keep the facts from their friend.

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><p>:o We're coming to a close soon everyone! Hope you enjoyed reading and I'd love a review.<p> 


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